Died On This Date (February 7, 1990) Jimmy Van Heusen / American Composer
themusicsover Jimmy Van Heusen (Born Edward Babcock)
January 26, 1913 – February 7, 1990
Jimmy Van Heusen was an Emmy nominated, Golden Globe nominated and multi-Academy Award winning composer of film and television music. After college, Van Heusen went to work playing the piano for several publishers of the storied Tin Pan Alley. During that time, he became an extremely prolific tunesmith, ultimately penning the music for over 800 songs. More than 50 of those have become standards. Over the course of his career, he collaborated with the likes of Johnny Mercer, Phil Silvers, and most famously, Sammy Cahn. Fourteen songs for which Van Heusen wrote the music were nominated for Academy Awards for best song. Those that won were “Swinging on a Star,” “All the Way,” “High Hopes,” and “Call Me Irresponsible.” Other famous standards of his include “Come Fly With Me,” “Love and Marriage,” “You My Love,” “Love Is The Tender Trap,” and “It Could Happen To You.” Jimmy Van Heusen passed away at the age of 77 on February 7, 1990. A close friend of Frank Sinatra’s, he is buried in the Sinatra family plot.
Carl Wilson was the youngest of three brothers who formed the Beach Boys. With 
King Tubby’s path to music success was a bit unconventional in that he was not originally a musician, singer, songwriter, or producer, but a skilled Jamaican radio repairman. As sound systems and recording equipment began to grow in popularity throughout Jamaica during the ’50s, and ’60s, so did the demand for Tubby’s skill to fix equipment was continually exposed to bad elements of the island. He soon opened his own repair shop where he put together some of the island’s best sound systems. He soon became skilled at creating sound effects like reverb and echo and was eventually working at the island’s top studios working on some of ska and reggae’s earliest records as a mixer or engineer. It was in this capacity that Tubby began experimenting in what would later be called “remixes,” a practice that he has been credited for inventing. By the ’70s, Tubby was arguably the most popular mixers in Jamaica. Though not a musician in the traditional sense, Tubby was able to manipulate the knobs and dials of a mixing board in a way that made him just as vital to the final product as any of the guitarists or drummers. By removing vocals and certain instruments from the mixes, he created a new form of music called “dub.” Over the course of his career, he mixed or remixed albums by the greatest producers in Jamaica. Tragedy struck on February 6, 1989 when King Tubby, who had just turned 48, was shot and killed in what was believed to be a random robbery. His murder was never solved.
Falco was an Austrian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who scored four massive international hits during the ’80s. His biggest in the U.S. were 1981’s “Der Kommissar” and 1986’s “Rock Me Amadeus.” “Der Kommissar” makes Falco the first to have a German language song go to #1 in the United States. Falco was a gifted musician growing up, so he dropped out of high school at 17 to pursue his calling. In those early days, he sang in a jazz-rock band and later played bass in an Austrian punk band. Following that, Falco released a string of hits that stretched through the early ’90s. On February 6, 1998, Falco was killed when he got into an accident with a bus in the Dominican Republic. He was 40 years old.