Mississippi Joe Callicott

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: Tex Ritter

date_of_death: January 2, 1974

age: 68

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Tex Ritter was an American singer, songwriter, and actor known for his contributions to country music and his work in Western films. Ritter's early life was shaped by a love for music, especially traditional country and cowboy songs. He pursued his passion for music and acting in the 1930s, first gaining recognition with his debut recording, Rye Whiskey in 1932. He became a prominent figure in the 1940s, recording numerous hit songs like "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me)" in 1952, which became his signature song and earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Song. In addition to his music career, Ritter appeared in over 78 films, often playing cowboy roles in B-Western movies, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a regular on the radio and television, and he became an influential figure in Western film and music. He remains to this day the only artist to be elected into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Cowboy Hall of Fame. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Oak Bluff Memorial Park, Port Neches, Texas.

popular name: Tommy Ramone

date_of_death: July 11, 2014

age: 65

cause_of_death: Bile Duct Cancer

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Tommy Ramone is fondly remembered as the co-founder, songwriter and drummer for the influential punk rock band the Ramones from its debut in 1974 to 1978, later serving as its producer, and was the longest-surviving original member of the Ramones. Tommy played on and co-produced the band's first three studio albums, Ramones (1976), Leave Home (1977) and Rocket to Russia (1977), and was sole producer on the 1979 live album It's Alive. These were the discs that created the imperishable Ramones sound, with their frantic pace and skillful deployment of the band's simple guitar-bass-drums format in tracks that sometimes lasted barely a minute and a half. Though the Ramones were celebrated as the quintessential New York punk band, as Tommy once explained: "First of all, it wasn't four morons; second of all, none of it was an accident; and third of all, it's four talented people who know what they like and who know what they're doing." Upon his death, he was laid to rest at New Montefiore Cemetery in West Babylon, New York.