Mississippi Joe Callicott

popular name: Berry Oakley

date_of_death: November 11, 1972

age: 24

cause_of_death: Fractured skull due to motorcycle accident

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Berry Oakley, an original founding member of the Allman Brothers Band and was an instrumental part of the early Allman Brothers sound, with his bass chords defining some of the band’s most popular songs like “Whipping Post”, ” “Mountain Jam”, “Les Brers”, and countless others. During his all-too-short tenure with the band Berry contributed to some of their most important records, including The Allman Brothers Band (1969), Idlewild South (1970), At Fillmore East (1971), Eat a Peach (1972), and the first two tracks of Brothers and Sisters (1973). And while the classic ABB lineup only lasted three years, Berry Oakley was ranked number 46 on Bass Player magazine's list of "The 100 Greatest Bass Players of All Time". Sadly one year after losing Duane Allman to a fatal motorcycle crash, on November 11, 1972, Berry was riding with Kim Payne (a member of the road crew) when Payne took his Triumph motorcycle into a curve too fast and hit a Macon City bus. Oakley said he was okay after the accident, declined medical treatment, and caught a ride home. Three hours later, he was rushed back to the hospital, delirious and in pain, and died of cerebral swelling caused by a fractured skull.

popular name: Arnold Schoenberg

date_of_death: July 13, 1951

age: 76

cause_of_death: Myocardial infarction

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, has shaped much of 20th-century musical thought. Many composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately reacted against it. Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality (although Schoenberg himself detested that term) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century classical music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea. Schoenberg's archival legacy is held at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.

popular name: Dean Manuel

date_of_death: July 31, 1964

age: 30

cause_of_death: Plane crash

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: "Dockie" Dean Manuel played piano for several noteworthy bands of the mid-twentieth century both on the West Coast and in Nashville, Tennessee. While attempting to re-establish himself in the West Coast country music scene after returning from the armed services, Dean received a phone call from Jim Reeves in Nashville, who was reorganizing the Blue Boys, named for Jim’s big hit of 1958, “Blue Boy.” Manuel and his family moved to Nashville. Manuel became part of the Jim Reeves Blue Boys band in 1959. He he was joined by drummer Mel Rogers and bass player James Kirkland to be in the band. Manuel, Rogers, and Kirkland, along with Leo Jackson (who was returning from the military), formed the nucleus of Jim Reeves and the Blue Boys. Sadly in 1965 Manuel died in a plane crash with Jim Reeves after leaving Independence County, where he had been helping Reeves with a land purchase.