Joey Ramone

popular name: Michel Petrucciani

date_of_death: January 6, 1999

age: 36

cause_of_death: Lung infection (complication related to osteogenesis imperfecta)

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Michel Petrucciani's ambition to become a pianist was fired when he saw a televised Duke Ellington concert when he was four. However, from birth he had osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic disease that causes brittle bones and, in his case, short stature. As an adult standing only three feet high and weighing 65 pounds, one might expect his ambitions to have been, so to speak, closer to the ground. Had he not aspired to achievements above his station, he might have chosen to play something more convenient such as the harmonica rather than the piano, and music would have missed one of the most powerful jazz pianists of the last two decades. Despite his health condition and relatively short life, he became one of the most accomplished jazz pianists of his generation. In 1994, he was granted the Order of the Légion d'honneur in Paris.

popular name: Cootie Williams

date_of_death: September 15, 1985

age: 74

cause_of_death: Kidney disease

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Cootie Williams was an American jazz, jump blues, and rhythm and blues trumpeter who is best remembered for his tenure with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Cootie first played professionally with the Young Family Band (which included the future tenor sax superstar Lester Young) when he was 14. In his later teens, he settled in New York and worked with James P. Johnson, Chick Webb, and Fletcher Henderson. Joining the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1929, among the hundreds of Ellington recordings on which he is featured, the “miniature concertos” “Echoes of Harlem” and “Concerto for Cootie” are especially noted; he also led a small ensemble of fellow Ellington band members, Cootie Williams and His Rug Cutters, on outstanding recordings. Williams left Ellington in 1940 and spent a year in Benny Goodman’s band. In the face of the general decline of the big band business, he led a big band for much of the 1940s and rhythm-and-blues units after that. He rejoined Ellington in 1962; by then he was a somewhat coarser but no less dramatic player. After Duke’s death he played in the Mercer Ellington band into the 1970s.

popular name: Elvin Shepherd

date_of_death: June 2, 1995

age: 72

cause_of_death: Undisclosed

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Elvin "Shep" Shepherd was a legendary saxophonist whose career spanned half a century. He traveled with such big name bands as Buck Clayton, Bill Doggett, Billy Ekstine, Erskin Hawkins, Lucky Milinder, and Nat Towles. During his storied career he also accompanied such artists as Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Ray Price, Della Reese, and Dakota Staton.