Joey Ramone

popular name: Keith Emerson

date_of_death: March 11, 2016

age: 71

cause_of_death: Self-Inflicted gunshot wound to the head

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Keith Emerson was an English keyboardist, songwriter, and record producer who was perhaps best known as one-third of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. He played keyboards in a number of bands before finding his first commercial success with the Nice in the late 1960s. After leaving the Nice in 1970, he was a founding member of Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP), one of the early progressive rock supergroups. Emerson, Lake & Palmer were commercially successful through much of the 1970s, becoming one of the best-known progressive rock groups of the era. He proved, without a shadow of doubt, that through his work with the Nice and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, who were both able to demonstrate that pop, classical music and jazz could not only co-exist but feed fruitfully off each other. Emerson reached a summit of success with ELP in the early 70s, when the group achieved a string of hit albums including Tarkus and Brain Salad Surgery, exploiting cutting-edge musical technology alongside outrageous showmanship. Emerson was a pioneer in the use of the Moog synthesiser and was the first musician to take the instrument on tour. Emerson remained active with ELP reunions and his own solo material. Suffering from depression, health and marital problems he took his own life at his home in Santa Monica, California.

popular name: Michel Berger

date_of_death: August 2, 1992

age: 44

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Michel Berger was a popular French singer and songwriter and a leading figure of France's pop music scene for two decades as a singer. As a songwriter he was active for such artists as his wife France Gall, Françoise Hardy and Johnny Hallyday. Berger first became known to the French public in the 1960s as singer of hit song Salut les copains, after which he became record producer and songwriter. In the early 1970s he produced the early albums of Véronique Sanson, and Allah once again in 1989. In 1973, he was responsible for producing the album Message personnel, the title track of which relaunched Françoise Hardy's career. He also produced the single Je suis moi for Hardy. Berger started writing for France Gall in 1974, produced all her albums from 1975 on, and married her the following year. In 1978, he composed the musical: Starmania, with lyrics by Luc Plamondon. The musical starred Gall, Claude Dubois, Daniel Balavoine, Diane Dufresne, Nanette Workman, Éric Estève and Fabienne Thibeault and was a big success in France in the 1980s and 1990s. Unfortunately his career stalled when his next two productions failed and he was under pressure to deliver another best seller. But at the age of 44, Berger suffered a heart attack while playing tennis, and despite the pleas of friends and family, he made his way up the hill to his home in Ramatuelle, France and suffered two more heart attacks in bed. He died waiting for the ambulance that was stuck in traffic from all the tourist in St. Tropez. He was laid to rest at Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris, France.

popular name: Luther Vandross

date_of_death: July 1, 2005

age: 54

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Luther Vandross was an American soul and R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer. Throughout his career, he achieved eleven consecutive RIAA-certified platinum albums and sold over 40 million records worldwide. After a short stint at college and drifting through numerous groups and as a backup singer, in 1974 after a short stay with David Bowie, Luther worked with a vast array of award-winning recording artists including Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan, Ben E. King, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, Cat Stevens, Gary Glitter, Ringo Starr, Sister Sledge, and Donna Summer. Across the next decade, Vandross would top the US R&B charts six more times - so successful was he, and, at times, so large his girth, that he was nicknamed "the Pavarotti of pop". British audiences embraced him in the late 1980s: Never Too Much hit the British top 20 eight years after it was an American hit. At one point, he had three albums simultaneously in the top 100. Vandross's greatest hits of that era - Stop To Love, There's Nothing Better Than Love, Any Love, Here And Now, Power Of Love/Love Power - established him as the most widely admired male soul singer of the post-disco era. Vandross continued to enjoy healthy sales in the early 1990s, but his glacial pop/soul style became increasingly predictable and he was soon overshadowed by a younger, more hip-hop oriented breed of male R&B singer. His last British hit was Endless Love, a duet with Mariah Carey in 1994. All in all, Vandross has been recognized as one of the 200 greatest singers of all time (2023) by Rolling Stone, as well as one of the greatest R&B artists by Billboard. In addition, NPR named him one of the 50 Great Voices. He was the recipient of eight Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year in 2004 for a track recorded not long before his death, "Dance with My Father". In 2021, he was posthumously inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.