Joey Ramone

popular name: Pee Wee Crayton

date_of_death: June 25, 1985

age: 70

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Pee Wee Crayton was a Texas born blues guitarist who first took up the electric blues guitar after he moved to California in 1935. In Oakland, Crayton joined Texas-born bluesman T-Bone Walker. Throughout the forties and early fifties he performed in blues clubs along the Pacific Coast and toured the nation with his own band. Crayton also performed with Roy Brown, Ivory Joe Hunter, Big Joe Turner, Red Callender, and Gatemouth Brown. He played the Apollo Theatre and the Savoy Ballroom, and went on tour in package shows with Roy Milton, Dinah Washington, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, and Big Maybelle. He is best remembered by blues fans as having written two songs that achieved moderate success, “Blues After Hours” and “The Texas Hop.” Crayton’s legendary status brought him renewed attention and several albums and festival appearances in later years and his periodic guitar battles with longtime friend T-Bone Walker always made headlines. Crayton died in Los Angeles just after returning from a triumphant return to his hometown of Austin to play at Antone’s.

popular name: Billy Joe Royal

date_of_death: October 6, 2015

age: 73

cause_of_death: Died in his sleep

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Billy Joe Royal was a Georgia-born singer who debuted on Columbia Records with "Down in the Boondocks" in 1965, which reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100. But he struggled to match his initial success with his subsequent records and starting in the late 1980s, he reinvented himself as a country singer. He was known for songs like "I'll Pin a Note on Your Pillow," ''Tell it Like it is" and "Till I Can't Take it Anymore" and was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1988. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Greenwood Cemetery in Morehead City, NC.

popular name: Webb Pierce

date_of_death: February 24, 1991

age: 69

cause_of_death: Pancreatic cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Webb Pierce was one of the most popular honky-tonk vocalist, songwriter and guitarist of the 1950s, charting more number one hits than any other country artist during the decade. Webb's biggest hit was "In the Jailhouse Now", which charted for 37 weeks in 1955, 21 of them at number one. Pierce also charted number one for several weeks each with his recordings of "Slowly" (1954), "Love, Love, Love" (1955), "I Don't Care" (1955), "There Stands the Glass" (1953), "More and More" (1954), "I Ain't Never" (1959), and his first number one "Wondering", which stayed at the top spot for four of its 27 weeks' charting in 1952. Other hits included "Teenage Boogie," "Tupelo County Jail" and "Bye Bye Love," later a hit for the Everly Brothers. For many, Pierce, with his flamboyant Nudie suits, twin silver dollar-lined convertibles and guitar-shaped pool became the most recognizable face of country music of the era. Pierce was a one-time member of the Grand Ole Opry, was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Cash Box Magazine, a music industry weekly, named him top country male vocalist of the year eight times from 1952 to 1963. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Nashville, Tennessee.