Joey Ramone

popular name: Eddie Lang

date_of_death: March 26, 1933

age: 30

cause_of_death: Blood loss during tonsillectomy surgery

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Born Salvatore Massaro in Philadelphia, PA, in 1920 at age 18 Salvatore legally changed his name to Eddie Lang, exchanged his violin for a banjo, and began working with band leaders Charlie Kerr, Bert Estlow, Vic D’Ippolito, and then Billy Lustig. In 1924, he exchanged his banjo for a one-stringed guitar when he became a member of the Mound City Blue Blowers led by Red McKenzie. He recorded one of the first guitar solos in “Deep Second Street Blues” in 1926. Before his performance, the guitar had not been a prominent instrument in jazz bands and dance orchestras. In 1929, Lang and Joe Venuti became members of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Vocalist Bing Crosby soon joined the orchestra on a trip west to Hollywood to make the movie King of Jazz in which Lang and Venuti appeared. Through Crosby’s wife, Lang met Kitty, a Ziegfeld girl, whom he soon married. In 1930 when Crosby was looking for a job in radio, he had Lang as his accompanist. Two years later, Crosby made another movie The Big Broadcast in which Lang also appeared. When Crosby returned to New York City and started his orchestra in late 1932, he hired Lang as a regular. Lang suffered from occasional laryngitis and had a chronic sore throat. After a doctor recommended a tonsillectomy, Crosby urged Lang to have the operation. Assured that the surgical procedure was routine, Lang entered Park West Hospital in Manhattan on March 26, 1933. He never woke up from the surgery and died at age 30. He was laid to rest at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania.

popular name: Bob Wills

date_of_death: May 13, 1975

age: 70

cause_of_death: Complications from a stroke and pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Bob Wills was a bandleader, fiddler, singer, and songwriter who is the most famous exponent of the popular musical genre now known as western swing, which synthesized ragtime, traditional fiddling, New Orleans jazz, blues, Mexican songs, and big band swing. Wills, along with his band the Texas Playboys, toured and recorded nonstop throughout the 1940s and early 1950s amassing dozens of hits including "Steel Guitar Rag", "New San Antonio Rose", "Smoke On The Water", "New Spanish Two Step" and "Faded Love." Wills had a heart attack in 1962 and a second one the next year, which forced him to disband the Playboys, although Wills continued to perform solo. He was recording an album with fan Merle Haggard in 1973 when a stroke left him comatose for 17 months until his death in 1975. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Wills and the Texas Playboys in 1999.

popular name: Miles Davis

date_of_death: September 28, 1991

age: 65

cause_of_death: Stroke, pneumonia, and respiratory failure

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: There are few musical geniuses in this world, but as jazz trumpeter, composer and bandleader Miles Davis is one of the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. His sound, technique and restless innovation as an individual performer and as a leader of jazz bands and groups won him recognition as perhaps the foremost setter of style and fashion in what is often called America's only indigenous musical art form.