Mississippi Joe Callicott

popular name: Big Joe Turner

date_of_death: November 24, 1985

age: 74

cause_of_death: Heart failure

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Big Joe Turner, a 300-pound legend who learned to sing the blues as a Kansas City junkman and transformed decades of urban black music into the roots of rock ‘n’ roll. Turner sang rhythm and blues songs such as “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” “Corrine Corrina” and “Lucille” that became the foundation of a new genre of music when white singers such as Elvis Presley and Bill Haley and the Comets popularized them for audiences of white teen-agers in the mid-1950s. The music took the name rock ‘n’ roll because those words appeared in the lyrics of several blues songs.

popular name: Brent Mydland

date_of_death: July 26, 1990

age: 37

cause_of_death: Drug overdose - acute cocaine and morphine intoxication ("speedball")

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Brent Mydland was a talented keyboardist, vocalist, and songwriter best remembered as a member of The Grateful Dead from 1979 to 1990, a longer tenure than any other keyboardist (aka The Hot Seat) in the band. No previous keyboard player contributed any enduring original songs to the Dead’s repertoire. Brent immediately made his impact felt with the songs “Far From Me” and “Easy to Love You,” which appeared on the Grateful Dead’s 1980 album “Go to Heaven,” released almost exactly a year after he joined the band. On 1987’s “In the Dark,” Brent brought “Tons of Steel” to the table, and he co-wrote the house rocker that opened many an ‘80s show, “Hell in a Bucket,” with Bob Weir and frequent collaborator John Perry Barlow.

popular name: Jelly Roll Morton

date_of_death: July 10, 1941

age: 50

cause_of_death: Respiratory distress due to previous stab wounds

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Along with Sidney Bechet, Johnny Dodds, Kid Ory, and Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton was one of the most important musical figure to emerge from the early days of New Orleans. While most will dismiss his claim that he, Jelly Roll Morton, alone created jazz music, there can be no doubt to his technical brilliance as a pianist, composer and arranger. For it was Jelly Roll Morton who transformed the rigid confines of ragtime and ushered in the free form structures of jazz. His composition "Jelly Roll Blues", published in 1915, was one of the first published jazz compositions. Morton also wrote "King Porter Stomp", "Wolverine Blues", "Black Bottom Stomp", and "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say" which were covered by every major jazz and dance orchestra including Benny Goodman and Fletcher Henderson. Sadly he never received a penny in royalties for his original compositions and he was only recognized for his contributions decades after his passing when Morton was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, elected as a charter member of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame and was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.