My feeling is to discount those who contributed to their own death through drugs or lifestyle, such as Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, etc.
My shortlist would be Lennon and Holly, and Lennon would be my final choice because I felt it the most, although I do remember the shock I felt when Elvis died - probably equalled only by the death of Princess Diana.
There are many others that could be added from Stumpy's list - my suggestions would be George Harrison and Freddie Mercury, although one might argue that both contributed to their own death (through lifestyle - AIDS and cancer).
Good points professor. My thoughts are that at least Elvis, Harrison, and Mercury got to reach adulthood before they kicked the bucket. As far as drugs/lifestyle: a little heroine or a few pills never killed anyone! Ha!
Like I've said before, I only really listen to rock-type music so I don't really know details about artists from other genres. These polls/articles are here for discussions and learning though, so carry on.
I went with Kurt mostly because it happened so early in his career, most of the others at least had a chance to get a healthy volume of great work out.
Yeah, he was fairly young. I believe it was Richie Valens who died when he was 17 though. And he had already written some great songs by that time. I think Buddy Holly was 22.
I was talking less about age at death and more about the (self-guessed) estimation how much important material they hadn't been able to create. And, I'm less familiar with Valens and Holly than Cobain :-)
I went with Buddy Holly on your list because I believe he had the most potential. If you haven't seen it, check out THIS list of musician death details.
For me it would definitely be Sam Cooke, as much for the absolute senselessness of it all as well as for the musical loss and the potential of what was to come.
Marvin Gaye was also a crushing blow (so to speak) but was suicidal towards the end of his life. A tragedy in itself.
If you include jazz musicians the names become stunning: Clifford Brown, Jimmy Blanton, Charlie Christian, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Bix Beiderbeck, Scott LaFaro, Bubber Miley, Jaco Pastorius, Susannah McCorkle and Booker Little are just those that spring to mind.
But then you’d have to let in the dead white guys and Mozart sweeps the field....
Born on January 22, 1931 Sam Cooke grew up the son of a Baptist minister in Chicago. At the age of fifteen he became the lead singer of the teenage gospel group the Highway QC's. After occasionally opening for (and outshining) The Soul Stirrers, Sam Cooke was recruited to replace the legendary R.H. Harris on lead vocals. Sam was then just nineteen years old. He spent half a dozen years at the pinnacle of the gospel world before his shocking and unprecedented move to secular music.
Sam Cooke's first hit came in 1957 with the self-penned "You Send Me." Not only would he write the vast majority of his own songs but he would go on to produce recordings and have a music publishing company (Kags Music), management firm and record label (SAR/Derby) all under his own name. Win Your Love For Me, Everybody Likes To Cha Cha Cha, Only Sixteen, Wonderful World, Chain Gang, Sad Mood, Cupid, Twistin' The Night Away, Having A Party, Bring It On Home To Me, Another Saturday Night, Ain't That Good News and many others followed.
On December 11, 1964 Sam Cooke was shot and killed under mysterious circumstances at a Los Angeles area motel. A woman, Elisa Boyer, claimed that he had tried to rape her. The motel manager, Bertha Franklin, who shot him claimed that he broke into her apartment and attacked her. The most likely explanation is that Boyer was a prostitute who often rolled her johns while, in exchange for a cut, the manager Franklin looked the other way. Misinformation and conspiracy theories abound to this day. Whatever the circumstances, Sam Cooke was dead at the age of thirty-three.
In just a hint of what might have been RCA released the song "Shake" as a single backed with "A Change is Gonna Come" after Cooke's death. Sam Cooke had written "A Change is Gonna Come" in response to Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind" and it shows the direction he was beginning to move in at the time of his death. Sam Cooke's career led directly to Aretha Franklin and many others in the church entering into popular music. He laid the foundation for all of Soul music in the same way that the older Ray Charles created the category of R&B. In 1986 Sam Cooke was one of the original ten inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He would be seventy-three years old today. He is still missed.
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Clifford Brown was the inheiritor to the jazz trumpet tradition that ran directly from Buddy Bolden, to King Oliver and then Louis Armstrong, through Roy Eldridge and his disciple Dizzy Gillespie and finally to Fats Navarro. He could play as high as Dizzy and as fast as Roy with a beautiful round burnished tone all over the horn and a ferocious, creative intelligence. He was younger than Miles Davis and free from the drug troubles that seemed to plague all of his contemporaries. He spent a year in the hospital after a car crash at the age of twenty but was able to resume his career unaffected. For the two years before his death he was in the Brown-Roach Quintet, a group that remains influential even to this day. He was asleep in the car after a late gig with bandmate Richie Powell when Richie's wife Nancy drove over an embankment, killing all three of them. Clifford Brown was twenty-five years old.
Clifford Brown's death marked the end of the trumpet's reign as the lead creative voice of jazz. Navarro had died from tuberculosis aggravated by his heroin addiction when only twenty-six in 1950 and their successor Lee Morgan was shot by his mistress at the age of thirty-three in 1972. But the affect of Brownie's death on fellow musicians was beyond measure. From that moment forward the saxophone has been the signature driving force in jazz with the baton passing to Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and their descendents.
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To quote Tom Lehrer: " It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."
I think I'll vote for Buddy Holly because he was so young and a real musical talent. Who knows, he could've taken the same path as the Beatles and expanded on his well-crafted pop songs to become one of the most brilliant innovators in music history. But we'll never know, will we?
P.S. I probably wouldn't have voted for him anyway, but Nick Drake really belongs on this poll.
How can you forget JEFF BUCKLEY!!! He was so talented, so promins...and then we lost him! *sob*
My feeling is to discount those who contributed to their own death through drugs or lifestyle, such as Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, etc.
My shortlist would be Lennon and Holly, and Lennon would be my final choice because I felt it the most, although I do remember the shock I felt when Elvis died - probably equalled only by the death of Princess Diana.
There are many others that could be added from Stumpy's list - my suggestions would be George Harrison and Freddie Mercury, although one might argue that both contributed to their own death (through lifestyle - AIDS and cancer).
Good points professor. My thoughts are that at least Elvis, Harrison, and Mercury got to reach adulthood before they kicked the bucket. As far as drugs/lifestyle: a little heroine or a few pills never killed anyone! Ha!
Like I've said before, I only really listen to rock-type music so I don't really know details about artists from other genres. These polls/articles are here for discussions and learning though, so carry on.
I voted Lennon, a great, great loss.
However, I would absolutely second the motion to add Duane Allman.
I went with Kurt mostly because it happened so early in his career, most of the others at least had a chance to get a healthy volume of great work out.
Yeah, he was fairly young. I believe it was Richie Valens who died when he was 17 though. And he had already written some great songs by that time. I think Buddy Holly was 22.
I was talking less about age at death and more about the (self-guessed) estimation how much important material they hadn't been able to create. And, I'm less familiar with Valens and Holly than Cobain :-)
I went with Buddy Holly on your list because I believe he had the most potential. If you haven't seen it, check out THIS list of musician death details.
Yeah, I did read that before. Good list.
Although I might not select him in the end, I think I would add Duane Allman.
For me it would definitely be Sam Cooke, as much for the absolute senselessness of it all as well as for the musical loss and the potential of what was to come.
Marvin Gaye was also a crushing blow (so to speak) but was suicidal towards the end of his life. A tragedy in itself.
If you include jazz musicians the names become stunning: Clifford Brown, Jimmy Blanton, Charlie Christian, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Bix Beiderbeck, Scott LaFaro, Bubber Miley, Jaco Pastorius, Susannah McCorkle and Booker Little are just those that spring to mind.
But then you’d have to let in the dead white guys and Mozart sweeps the field....
good feedback. I don't know too much about many of them unfortunately.
Born on January 22, 1931 Sam Cooke grew up the son of a Baptist minister in Chicago. At the age of fifteen he became the lead singer of the teenage gospel group the Highway QC's. After occasionally opening for (and outshining) The Soul Stirrers, Sam Cooke was recruited to replace the legendary R.H. Harris on lead vocals. Sam was then just nineteen years old. He spent half a dozen years at the pinnacle of the gospel world before his shocking and unprecedented move to secular music.
Sam Cooke's first hit came in 1957 with the self-penned "You Send Me." Not only would he write the vast majority of his own songs but he would go on to produce recordings and have a music publishing company (Kags Music), management firm and record label (SAR/Derby) all under his own name. Win Your Love For Me, Everybody Likes To Cha Cha Cha, Only Sixteen, Wonderful World, Chain Gang, Sad Mood, Cupid, Twistin' The Night Away, Having A Party, Bring It On Home To Me, Another Saturday Night, Ain't That Good News and many others followed.
On December 11, 1964 Sam Cooke was shot and killed under mysterious circumstances at a Los Angeles area motel. A woman, Elisa Boyer, claimed that he had tried to rape her. The motel manager, Bertha Franklin, who shot him claimed that he broke into her apartment and attacked her. The most likely explanation is that Boyer was a prostitute who often rolled her johns while, in exchange for a cut, the manager Franklin looked the other way. Misinformation and conspiracy theories abound to this day. Whatever the circumstances, Sam Cooke was dead at the age of thirty-three.
In just a hint of what might have been RCA released the song "Shake" as a single backed with "A Change is Gonna Come" after Cooke's death. Sam Cooke had written "A Change is Gonna Come" in response to Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind" and it shows the direction he was beginning to move in at the time of his death. Sam Cooke's career led directly to Aretha Franklin and many others in the church entering into popular music. He laid the foundation for all of Soul music in the same way that the older Ray Charles created the category of R&B. In 1986 Sam Cooke was one of the original ten inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He would be seventy-three years old today. He is still missed.
-----
Clifford Brown was the inheiritor to the jazz trumpet tradition that ran directly from Buddy Bolden, to King Oliver and then Louis Armstrong, through Roy Eldridge and his disciple Dizzy Gillespie and finally to Fats Navarro. He could play as high as Dizzy and as fast as Roy with a beautiful round burnished tone all over the horn and a ferocious, creative intelligence. He was younger than Miles Davis and free from the drug troubles that seemed to plague all of his contemporaries. He spent a year in the hospital after a car crash at the age of twenty but was able to resume his career unaffected. For the two years before his death he was in the Brown-Roach Quintet, a group that remains influential even to this day. He was asleep in the car after a late gig with bandmate Richie Powell when Richie's wife Nancy drove over an embankment, killing all three of them. Clifford Brown was twenty-five years old.
Clifford Brown's death marked the end of the trumpet's reign as the lead creative voice of jazz. Navarro had died from tuberculosis aggravated by his heroin addiction when only twenty-six in 1950 and their successor Lee Morgan was shot by his mistress at the age of thirty-three in 1972. But the affect of Brownie's death on fellow musicians was beyond measure. From that moment forward the saxophone has been the signature driving force in jazz with the baton passing to Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and their descendents.
-----
To quote Tom Lehrer: " It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."
I think I'll vote for Buddy Holly because he was so young and a real musical talent. Who knows, he could've taken the same path as the Beatles and expanded on his well-crafted pop songs to become one of the most brilliant innovators in music history. But we'll never know, will we?
P.S. I probably wouldn't have voted for him anyway, but Nick Drake really belongs on this poll.
this one of the toughest polls on this site!
Their all iconic and important to the evolution of music... dang!
Im gonna go with John Lennon though but its tough, cus i mean i really like Nirvana so i could go for Kurt.