Musicians We Lost In 2019 So Far

Celebrities just aren't like other people. Sure, on the whole they're more talented, better looking, and far wealthier than the average Joe Minivan or Judy Paycheck, but it's more of a perception thing. We feel like we know famous people — particularly the artists — because their work speaks to universally relatable themes, or rocks us, or moves us in some way. This is particularly true of musicians, who pour out their souls in their lyrics and craft a relatively small handful of notes into classic tunes that soundtrack important moments in our lives. Also, because their voices are permanently etched in wax, digital encoding, and whatever a CD is, it feels like they never die because their work never does. And really, isn't leaving a beloved legacy what all humans ultimately want to do with their time on this space rock?

Here are some of the most famous, notable, and influential musicians of all genres who in 2019 made a permanent break with mortality but whose work never will.

It's evolved into a niche medium whose events and individuals are known by an increasingly rarified group of grown-up theater kids and musical aficionados centered primarily in the New York area, but in the middle of the 20th century, Broadway was as broad, mainstream, and familiar to the average American as top 40 hits and box-office blockbusters. In the 1950s and '60s, cast albums from productions of My Fair Lady, West Side Story, and Hello, Dolly! were among the best-selling records of the era. That last one was thanks to the star power of one of biggest — if not the biggest — Broadway legend of them all: Carol Channing, who portrayed plucky matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi. Her stage presence, charisma, and idiosyncratic, rough-edged, talky style of singing paired well with musical theater, and Channing was never away from the Great White Way or Hello, Dolly! for long, starring in productions from the 1940s through the 1990s, including two revivals of her signature show. (She also sang her way through shows like Wonderful Town and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, in addition to the occasional movie (a Golden Globe-nominated performance in Thoroughly Modern Millie), and cartoon voiceover work (Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers and an animated The Addams Family adaptation). Channing was 97.

Harold Bradley was so old school country music that he played a major part in establishing his hometown of Nashville as the capital of the genre, if not a world-renowned music city. Growing up in the area's rich musical culture, Bradley first learned to play the banjo, which probably made learning to play the guitar seem like a piece of cake when his older brother, Owen, convinced him to switch instruments. In 1954 the siblings opened the Bradley Film and Recording Studios, later renamed the Quonset Hut Studio. That marked the first (of many) studios on Nashville's legendary "Music Row."

Not just the boss, Bradley was also a resident session musician at the Quonset Hut, an essential member of The A-Team, a group of studio players that backed superstars like Elvis Presley, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, and Dolly Parton. It's the lyrical guitar of Bradley that almost steals classic tunes like Roger Miller's "King of the Road" and Brenda Lee's "I'm Sorry."

Also the first president of the Nashville wing of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences — validation of country music by the rest of the industry — Bradley died at the age of 93 on January 31, 2019, "peacefully in his sleep" according to his daughters.

After getting his start in the '70s funk band Revelation Funk (which landed a track, "Time Is On Our Side" on the soundtrack of the 1975 cult classic Dolemite), James Ingram found his niche in the music industry: as a sideman, collaborator, and duet partner. He played keyboard for Ray Charles before becoming super-producer Quincy Jones' second weapon in the 1980s. He sang on two hit singles of Jones' star-studded 1981 album The Dude — "Just Once" and "One Hundred Ways." That auspicious debut earned Ingram three Grammy nominations — Best New Artist, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance ("Just Once"), and a win for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance ("One Hundred Ways"). Ingram kept dueting and kept scoring hits and awards — his collaboration with Michael McDonald, "Yah Mo B There" won a Grammy, while he sang with Linda Ronstadt on "Somewhere Out There," the hit ballad from An American Tail, and with Patti Austin on both the Oscar-nominated song "How Do You Keep the Music Playing" from Best Friends and the #1 hit "Baby, Come to Me." In the early '90s, his smooth, silky, expressive voice was all over soft-rock radio: His breakout solo hit "I Don't Have the Heart" topped the charts in 1990. Ingram was 66.

In the late '90s, music filed under the umbrella term of "electronica" was the next big thing in pop culture. The most photogenic and interesting electronic-music personalities became the rock stars of the moment and presumably of the future. Two of the biggest breakout acts of this Wild West, post-grunge period: the helmet-wearing French robots of Daft Punk, and Keith Flint, front man of the English act the Prodigy. Sporting an often garishly-dyed mohawk plus intimidating, punk-inspired street fashions and wild eyes surrounded in thick black paint, Flint became the de facto public face of his band and his genre, bopping around the stage and delivering menacing vocal hooks on smash hits like "Firestarter" and "Breathe." Both singles originated from the Prodigy's The Fat of the Land, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard album chart in July 1997.

On Monday, March 4, Prodigy founder Liam Howlett announced Flint's death via a statement on the group's Facebook page. "It is with deepest shock and sadness that we can confirm the death of our brother and best friend Keith Flint. A true pioneer, innovator, and legend. He will be forever missed." According to Howlett via the Prodigy's Instagram account, the 49-year-old front man "took his own life" sometime over the previous weekend. 

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

After a move from Massachusetts to California in 1943, aspiring drummer Harold Belsky trained with Roy Knapp, the same guy who taught legendary jazz drummer Gene Krupa. Before long, the student surpassed the teacher. Harold Belsky became Hal Blaine, and after cutting his teeth playing in big bands, Hal Blaine became one of the greatest and most celebrated drummers of all time, as the top session musicians in the business. Not only in quantity — Spin says Blaine estimates he played on more than 35,000 recordings — but quality, too. Among the songs that bear Blaine's distinctive beat-keeping: Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson," the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations," the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night," the 5th Dimension's "Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In," the theme song from The Brady Bunch, and various recordings by Steely Dan, Herb Alpert, and the Monkees.

Blaine sat behind that kit until the end — he played drums with a band at his own 90th birthday party in February 2019. On March 11, 2019, Blaine's family confirmed on the drummer's Facebook page that the musician had passed away at age 90. In mourning his friend and colleague, no less an authority than Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys called Blaine "the greatest drummer ever."

What if Justin Bieber suddenly decided to make moody, experimental stuff befitting Animal Collective? That's pretty much what happened when Scott Walker left the Walker Brothers and became one of his generation's most innovative singer-songwriters. The Beatles-esque Walker Brothers did very well for themselves in the '60s with hits like "Make It Easy On Yourself" and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore." But Walker wanted to do more, so, he went solo — and took on a dark, baroque, and imaginative approach, releasing Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3, and Scott 4 all between 1967 and 1970. Among his tunes: "The Seventh Seal" (a song about the plague) and the nationalism-criticism "Hero of the War." Not exactly Backstreet Boys material, but Walker remained prolific into the '70s, '80s, and beyond. Since 2010, he released the albums Bish Bosch, the Sunn O))) joint project Soused, and the score for the film Vox Lux.

His work was so future-forward that he inspired two of the most future-forward musicians in his wake. Thom Yorke called Walker "a huge influence on Radiohead and myself, showing me how I could use my voice and words." David Bowie once described Walker as "my idol since I was a kid."

The musician, whose real name was Noel Scott Engel, died on March 22, 2019, according to 4AD, the innovative record label where he made music until the end. Walker was 76.

The Beat (or, as they're known in the U.S., the English Beat), came up as part of the second wave ska movement in the U.K. in the late '70s and early '80s. They experienced big commercial success, and their songs endured because they were more than just a genre band. The Beat combined ska elements (like a horn section) with soul, reggae, punk, and pop hooks to make some of the era's most indelible standards, particularly "Save it for Later" and "Mirror in the Bathroom." Leading the band's musical direction with a soulful, emotive voice was singer Roger Charlery, or, as he was known on stage, Ranking Roger.

After the Beat split up in 1983, he and bandmate Dave Wakeling formed a new band called General Public. It sounded very similar to their old band, thanks to Ranking Roger singing his heart out on hits like "Tenderness" and a cover of the Staples Singers' "I'll Take You There." In early 2019, Ranking Roger announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and had also suffered a stroke. He died on March 26 at the age of 56.

At the dawn of the 1980s, the lines between country music and pop blurred, and the twangy genre went mainstream — without losing its authenticity — thanks to performers like George Strait, Kenny Rogers, and Earl Thomas Conley. Conley was a musical late bloomer, signing with small Nashville record label GRT in 1974 after six years of trying to break through following a stint in the U.S. Army in the late '60s. While his early songs didn't go anywhere, he found work writing hits for big artists, such as "This Time I've Hurt Her More Than She Loves Me" for Conway Twitty. In 1979, Warner Bros. Records snatched up Conley, and he soon began a successful run of country chart hits — Conley went to #1 a remarkable 18 times in the 1980s. Among his best known songs: "Fire and Smoke," "Your Love's on the Line," and "Don't Make It Easy for Me."

Conley's brother confirmed the 77-year-old singer died in the early hours of April 10, 2019, following a long illness and hospice care. Country star Blake Shelton reflected on Conley's death on Instagram. "Earl was my all time favorite singer, hero and my friend."

Never appearing in public without his hat, sunglasses, and mustache, Leon Redbone was a singer and guitarist who kept the details of his off-stage life so shrouded in mystery that he very well could have been concealing the fact that he was a time-traveler. That's how expertly and lovingly he performed early American-style music — folk, pop, vaudeville, and Tin Pan Alley — in his suitably old-time drawl. According to the Toronto Star, Redbone was born Dickran Gobalian in Cyprus, then moved to Canada in the mid-1960s, changed his name, and started playing folk clubs, where his aim to play old-fashioned music fit in nicely.

He kept at it, and in the mid-1970s he became an unlikely and critically hailed pop sensation. High-profile fans like Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt thought he was the bee's knees, and he was a fixture during the early seasons of Saturday Night Live. Redbone's voice was even more distinctive than his style, and it reached far beyond the 16 albums he recorded in his career — he sang the theme song to '80s sitcom Mr. Belvedere, showed up in commercials for Purina dog food and Budweiser, and voiced the stop-motion snowman Leon in the Christmas classic Elf. Redbone retired from performing in 2015 due to health issues, and he died at age 69 on May 30, 2019. Forever a witty guy, his probably self-written death announcement listed his age of death as 127.

As a member of the Geto Boys, Bushwick Bill brought new character to hip-hop. Sure, he rapped about life in the tough neighborhood of Houston's Fifth Ward, but he delivered his thoughts with an extreme level of bizarre and violent imagery, the kind of stuff more common in a horror movie than a rap song. Born in Jamaica and small in stature due to a type of dwarfism, the man born Richard Stephen Shaw settled with his family in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn before moving to Houston. After joined the Geto Boys as a dancer named Little Billy, he soon earned a promotion to rapper, where, alongside Willie D and Scarface, he introduced the world to the proto-Southern rap sound, quite different than the stuff coming out of hip-hop hotbeds like Los Angeles and New York. The Geto Boys' 1991 album We Can't Be Stopped includes the group's best known song, "Mind Playing Tricks on Me," as well as one of the most shocking album covers ever printed. It is a real photo of Bushwick Bill, who, after a substance-fueled fight with his girlfriend, was shot in the eye. The picture shows him bloodied on a stretcher flanked by the other Geto Boys.

Bushwick Bill had long battled pancreatic cancer, prompting a Geto Boys reunion/farewell tour, but it was canceled due to the rapper's declining health. On June 9, 2019, Bushwick Bill passed away in Colorado at the age of 52. 

Daniel Johnston was an outsider to the mainstream music world, an idiosyncratic but prolific singer-songwriter who did things his own way, using his high, shaky voice to charm audiences with his deceptively simple songs like "True Love Will Find You in the End." His work would prove extremely influential — the bands that inspired all the other bands were themselves inspired by Johnston. Among his admirers and acts that covered his songs: Sonic Youth, the Flaming Lips, Yo La Tengo, Tom Waits, Beck, and Kurt Cobain.

In 1980, Johnston self-recorded his first album, Songs of Pain, then self-released it on cassette. After the seminal Hi, How Are You in 1983, Johnston moved to Austin, Texas, where he continued to make and hand out his own stuff. An intrigued MTV profiled him, which drew attention to both Johnston and the burgeoning Austin indie rock scene. Johnston created more than two dozen musical projects, with the last, Space Ducks, arriving in 2012. Struggling for years with his health — he had kidney problems and dealt with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — he gave up touring after a 2017 swing backed by members of Wilco and Built to Spill. According to his manager, he died at home on September 11, 2019, after a heart attack. Johnston was 58.

The 30-year-plus career of Kim Shattuck is also the history of the development of American alternative rock — and she played a big part in how that sound evolved. She got her start in the '80s with the Pandoras, an L.A. psychedelic garage rock band that got more of a hard edge as the decade wore on. In 1991, she left that group and with former bandmate Melanie Vammen, Shattuck soon formed the Muffs, a quintessential '90s alterna-pop band, blurring the lines between pop-rock and punk and anchoring it all with her signature raspy but bouncy vocals. The Muffs are probably best known for a cover of Kim Wilde's "Kids in America" for the soundtrack of Clueless, a song that pretty much defined that classic teen movie. Shattuck also guested on songs by bands clearly influenced by the Muffs' edgy/snarling/radio-friendly pop-punk, such as NOFX and Bowling for Soup. In 2013, she enjoyed a short but high-profile stint replacing Kim Deal in the Pixies, a gig that would last a mere five months. 

On October 2, 2019, Shattuck succumbed to the effects of myotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the degenerative nerve disease with which she'd suffered for two years. The singer-songwriter-instrumentalist was 56.

Rapper Juice Wrld experienced a lot of music industry success, and quickly at that. In 2018, his debut album Goodbye & Good Riddance hit #4 on the Billboard album chart and spawned the huge hits "All Girls Are the Same" and "Lucid Dreams," which made it all the way to #2 on the Hot 100. (That song featured a sample of the guitar riff from Sting's "Shape of My Heart"; the guy who came up with that motif, guitarist Dominic Miller, said that "Lucid Dreams" constituted "the most intelligent version of that riff that I've ever heard." Other hits followed, including "Fine China," "Robbery," and "Bandit," and his second full-length album Death Race for Love went all the way to #1.

Just after the release of Goodbye & Good Riddance, Juice Wrld (real name: Jarad Anthony Higgins) dropped the EP Too Soon..., a tribute to deceased rappers Lil Peep and XXXTentacion. The song "Legends" includes the sadly prophetic line, "What's the 27 club? We ain't making it past 21." 

On Sunday, December 8, 2019, Juice Wrld disembarked from a plane at Midway Airport in Chicago, and while walking through the terminal, suffered a seizure. According to law enforcement sources who spoke to TMZ, blood was coming out of the rapper's mouth when paramedics arrived. Conscious when transported by emergency officials but pronounced dead at a hospital within hours, Juice Wrld turned 21-years-old just a few days before his death.