Joey Ramone

popular name: Ruth Wallis

date_of_death: December 22, 2007

age: 87

cause_of_death: Alzheimer's disease

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Ruth Wallis performed risqué cabaret numbers for listeners worldwide during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. She was known as the Queen of the Party Song, and began her career performing jazz and cabaret songs. Ruth was a veteran of ten comedy albums which sold worldwide for over two decades. She traveled extensively as an international star doing her own songs and appeared in top supper clubs in Las Vegas, Miami and was a sensation and sell out on her tours of Australia, London and New Zealand. In the sixties, her albums enjoyed great success and were released on her own Wallis Originals label. Her signature number was "The Dinghy Song” which sold more than 250,000 copies. Her songs were banned from Boston radio and her records were seized by custom agents in Australia, but the incidents only made her more popular. In the end Ruth Wallis wrote the words and music to over 150 songs and her career spanned three decades and four continents. Wallis’s work was the inspiration for the off-Broadway revue, “Boobs! The Musical: The World According to Ruth Wallis” in 2003. Upon her death, she was laid to rest in Sharon Memorial Park, Sharon, Massachusetts.

popular name: Bon Scott

date_of_death: February 19, 1980

age: 33

cause_of_death: Acute alcohol poisoning

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Bon Scott, born Ronald Belford Scott on July 9, 1946, in Forfar, Scotland, was the iconic lead singer and lyricist of the Australian rock band AC/DC. His family emigrated to Australia in 1952, settling in Fremantle, Western Australia. Known for his distinctive raspy voice, wild stage presence, and rebellious charisma, Scott joined AC/DC in 1974 and quickly became a driving force behind the band's early success. He helped craft their raw, hard-hitting sound and contributed memorable lyrics to classic albums like High Voltage, Let There Be Rock, and Highway to Hell. Tragically, at the height of his career, Scott died on February 19, 1980, in London at the age of 33, reportedly from acute alcohol poisoning. Fans around the world visit his grave at Fremantle Cemetery in Australia.

popular name: Mel Taylor

date_of_death: August 11, 1996

age: 62

cause_of_death: Lung cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: His name might not be familiar, but music fans young and old would recognize his signature drumbeat on one of the most popular instrumental songs ever recorded – “Hawaii Five-O” by the Ventures. Joining the Ventures after their original drummer was badly hurt in an auto accident, Mel Taylor sat behind the drum kit through an extraordinary 37 charting albums that made the Ventures one of the biggest recording acts in history.