Joey Ramone

popular name: Al Wilson

date_of_death: April 21, 2008

age: 68

cause_of_death: Kidney Failure

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Al Wilson is best remembered for the #1 pop hit "Show and Tell". From the age of 12 Wilson was already singing professionally - his own spiritual quartet and singing in the church choir, even performing covers of country & western hits. After a two-year military stint, Wilson settled in Los Angeles, touring the local nightclub circuit before joining the R&B vocal group the Jewels; from there he landed with the Rollers, followed by a stint with the instrumental combo the Souls. In 1966 singer Johnny Rivers not only signed Wilson to his Soul City imprint, but also agreed to produce the sessions that yielded the 1968 R&B smash "The Snake." The minor hit "Do What You Gotta Do" appeared that same year, but Wilson then largely disappeared from sight until 1973, when he issued the platinum-selling Weighing In -- the album's success was spurred by the shimmering "Show and Tell," a Johnny Mathis castoff that sold well over a million copies. "The La La Peace Song," released in 1974, proved another major hit, and two years later, "I've Got a Feeling We'll Be Seeing Each Other Again" peaked at number three on the R&B chart. With 1979's "Count the Days" Wilson scored his final chart hit and spent the next two decades touring local clubs and lounges before succumbing to kidney disease at the age of 68. He was laid to rest at Evergreen Memorial Park in Riverside, California.

popular name: Arnold Schoenberg

date_of_death: July 13, 1951

age: 76

cause_of_death: Myocardial infarction

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, has shaped much of 20th-century musical thought. Many composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately reacted against it. Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality (although Schoenberg himself detested that term) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century classical music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea. Schoenberg's archival legacy is held at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.

popular name: E. Power Biggs

date_of_death: March 10, 1977

age: 70

cause_of_death: Bleeding ulcers

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: From the late 1930's on, Mr. Biggs was a dominant figure in the U.S. in arousing interest in serious organ music and in changing the style of its performance. Through his concert tours, weekly recitals over Columbia Broadcasting System's coast‐to‐coast network and recordings he reached millions of listeners, persuading them of the glories of organ music and of its authentic performance. During his career Biggs recorded over 50 albums for the Columbia Masterworks Records and RCA Victor labels for more than three decades. Between 1942 and 1958, he also hosted a weekly radio program of organ music (carried throughout the United States on the CBS Radio Network) that introduced audiences to the pipe organ and its literature.