Joey Ramone

popular name: Nico

date_of_death: July 18, 1988

age: 49

cause_of_death: Cerebral hemorrhage after falling from a bicycle

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Nico was a German-born marginal singer, songwriter, musician, model, and actress. She had small roles in several films, including Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966). In 1967, at the insistence of Warhol, she sang on four songs of the Velvet Underground's debut album "The Velvet Underground & Nico". At the same time, she started a solo career and released "Chelsea Girl". Neither of albums was a commercial success. In Los Angeles Nico's friend and lover, Jim Morrison, suggested that she start writing her own material. Soon after John Cale of The Velvet Underground became her musical arranger and produced The Marble Index, Desertshore, The End... and other subsequent albums. Yet despite having access to and working with Brian Jones (The Rolling Stones), Bob Dylan, Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Lou Reed, Tim Hardin, Tim Buckley, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Jackson Browne, Nico was unable to find an audience larger than a small club. This was in part that she was notoriously unpleasant to work with, addicted to heroin, abused alcohol and was partial deaf which made it difficult to hold a tune. After a concert in Berlin in June 1988, she went on holiday in Ibiza to rest and died as the result of a cycling accident.

popular name: Charles Aznavour

date_of_death: October 1, 2018

age: 94

cause_of_death: Cardiorespiratory arrest complicated by an acute pulmonary edema

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Charles Aznavour was a French singer of Armenian ancestry, as well as a songwriter, lyricist, actor and diplomat. Aznavour was known for his distinctive vibrato tenor voice: clear and ringing in its upper reaches, with gravelly and profound low notes. In a career as a composer, singer and songwriter spanning over 70 years, he recorded more than 1,200 songs interpreted in 9 languages. Moreover, he wrote or co-wrote more than 1,000 songs for himself and others. Aznavour is regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time and an icon of 20th-century pop culture. Between 1974 and 2016, Charles Aznavour received over sixty gold and platinum records around the world. According to his record company, the total sales of the artist's recordings were over 180 million units.

popular name: James Booker

date_of_death: November 8, 1983

age: 43

cause_of_death: Renal failure related to chronic abuse of heroin and alcohol

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Booker was a New Orleans rhythm and blues keyboardist whose unique style combined rhythm and blues with jazz standards. Musician Dr. John described Booker as "the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced." Flamboyant in personality and having an extraordinary technical facility, he was known as "the Black Liberace" as well as "The Piano Prince of New Orleans". Booker's two-fisted, syncopated keyboard style was a major influence on New Orleans rhythm-and-blues in the 1950's and 1960's, and he was known in New Orleans as a flamboyant pianist who was likely to toss a Chopin etude into the middle of a boogie-woogie. He had a hit with ''Gonzo,'' an organ instrumental, in 1960, and played on stage and in recording sessions for Wilson Pickett, Lloyd Price, Aretha Franklin, Bobby ''Blue'' Bland, B. B. King, Ringo Starr, the Coasters, the Doobie Brothers and others. But his career was largely confined to New Orleans. And despite his legendary consumption of drugs and alcohol (he lost his left eye to drug abuse) he is considered by most the finest, wildest and most unpredictable pianist of his time.