Joey Ramone

popular name: Jerome Kern

date_of_death: November 11, 1945

age: 60

cause_of_death: Cerebral hemorrhage

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: If he had only written the score for Showboat, Jerome Kern's position as a musical genius would be secure. Instead he also wrote Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, The Way You Look Tonight and countless other songs for Broadway and the movies. Later in life he worked in Hollywood with Dorothy Fields and Johnny Mercer, creating Oscar-winning works with the films Swingtime and Lady Be Good. While in Hollywood Kern wrote hit songs for Dinah Shore, Glenn Miller, Peggy Lee and Bing Crosby. It all came to a sudden end when while walking to rehearsals for a revival of Showboat he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while walking at the corner of Park Avenue and 57th Street. He never regained consciousness and his long-time friend Oscar Hammerstein II remained at his side until his death six days later, all the while humming one of Kern’s favorite songs they had written together, “I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star”.

popular name: Benjamin Orr

date_of_death: October 3, 2000

age: 53

cause_of_death: Pancreatic cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Benjamin Orr was the singer, songwriter, bassist and co-founder of the rock band the Cars. He sang lead vocals on several of their best known songs, including "Just What I Needed", "Let's Go" and "Drive". Even when the Cars had begun to lose momentum, Orr showed he could function successfully on his own with his album The Lace (1986). This gave him a Top 40 hit with "Stay The Night". Orr was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Cars in 2018.

popular name: Tommy Ramone

date_of_death: July 11, 2014

age: 65

cause_of_death: Bile Duct Cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Tommy Ramone is fondly remembered as the co-founder, songwriter and drummer for the influential punk rock band the Ramones from its debut in 1974 to 1978, later serving as its producer, and was the longest-surviving original member of the Ramones. Tommy played on and co-produced the band's first three studio albums, Ramones (1976), Leave Home (1977) and Rocket to Russia (1977), and was sole producer on the 1979 live album It's Alive. These were the discs that created the imperishable Ramones sound, with their frantic pace and skillful deployment of the band's simple guitar-bass-drums format in tracks that sometimes lasted barely a minute and a half. Though the Ramones were celebrated as the quintessential New York punk band, as Tommy once explained: "First of all, it wasn't four morons; second of all, none of it was an accident; and third of all, it's four talented people who know what they like and who know what they're doing." Upon his death, he was laid to rest at New Montefiore Cemetery in West Babylon, New York.