Jeff Hannerman – Lead guitarist and a founding member of thrash rock innovators Slayer, died of liver failure after being bitten by a spider, at the age of 49. The 1980s progenitors of all things thrash came up thru the ranks of metal to join Metallica as a pinnacle of cool heaviness.
Chris Kelly – Half of tween hip hop sensation Kriss Kros is a lesson in what can happen when the bottom falls out. Dead at 34 from an overdose
Deanna Durbin – Sweetly voiced teen movie star from the 1930s and 1940s who made her money tenting not a million miles away from Judy Garland, she could sound both light airy but heartfelt at the same time. Listen to “Any Moment Now”. She died at the age of 91… which I no longer consider THAT OLD.
Don Shirley – Immensely talented, classically trained pianist who composed for jazz and pop, and all but invented the remix by reworking songs so thoroughly they became his own. I guess he was the Nick Lowe of jazz. Shirley died at the age of 86
Shamshad Begum – Indian woman singer who would be recorded but not appear in films,being only used in playbacks. She was fluent in many different dialects and is still played and revered. According to Wikipedia: “singing over 6,000 songs in Hindi and the Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil and Punjabi languages.” Pretty amazing, right? She was 94 years old and would have needed to be.