Joey Ramone

popular name: Antonio Salieri

date_of_death: May 7, 1825

age: 74

cause_of_death: Effects of dementia caused by a head wound

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Antonio Salieri was an Italian classical composer, conductor, and teacher. Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protégé of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary, and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers. Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the Habsburg court, a post he held from 1774 until 1792, Salieri dominated Italian-language opera in Vienna. During his career, he also spent time writing works for opera houses in Paris, Rome, and Venice, and his dramatic works were widely performed throughout Europe during his lifetime. Even as his works dropped from performance, and he wrote no new operas after 1804, he still remained one of the most important and sought-after teachers of his generation, and his influence was felt in every aspect of Vienna's musical life. Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Anton Eberl, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart were among the most famous of his pupils. In the last year of his life he struggled with health issues related to a head injury and passed away at the age of 74.

popular name: Jeff Porcaro

date_of_death: August 5, 1992

age: 38

cause_of_death: Heart attack due to occlusive coronary artery disease caused by atherosclerosis resulting from excessive cocaine use

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Jeff Porcaro was a founding member of the band Toto with his brother, Steve, and four others. The group’s hits included ″Hold the Line″ in 1977, ″Rosanna″ in 1982 and ″Africa″ in 1983. Interestingly enough, when Jeff was seventeen, he got his first professional gig playing in Sonny & Cher's touring band.

popular name: Cowboy Copas

date_of_death: March 5, 1963

age: 49

cause_of_death: Plane crash

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Cowboy Copas was an American country music singer who was popular from the 1940s until his death in the 1963 plane crash that also killed country stars Patsy Cline and Hawkshaw Hawkins. In 1943 Copas achieved national fame when he replaced Eddy Arnold as a vocalist in the Pee Wee King band, and began performing on the Grand Ole Opry. His first solo single, "Filipino Baby", released by King Records in 1946, hit number four on the Billboard country chart, and sparked the most successful period of his career. While continuing to appear on the Opry, Copas recorded several other hits during the late 1940s and early 1950s, including "Signed Sealed and Delivered", "The Tennessee Waltz", "Tennessee Moon", "Breeze", "I'm Waltzing with Tears in My Eyes", "Candy Kisses", "Hangman's Boogie", and "The Strange Little Girl". Copas' 1952 single, "'Tis Sweet to Be Remembered", reached number eight on the Billboard country chart, but it was his final top-40 hit for eight years. Although Copas did not maintain his popularity of the late 1940s through the next decade, he continued to perform regularly at the Grand Ole Opry, and appeared on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee. After a lackluster partnership with Dot Records, Copas surged to the top of the charts again in 1960 with the biggest hit of his career, "Alabam", which remained number one for three months.