Murdered Musicians: An Album a Day

Featuring Selena, Blaze Foley, Marvin Gaye, and others

My friend Ken and I decided to listen to an album every day this year. Each week is themed. At the end of each week, we rank what we listened to. To be clear, we aren’t ranking every album that fits the theme. We are only ranking what we chose to listen to during the last seven days.

This week’s theme is “murdered musicians,” meaning albums by artists who were killed by someone else. We’ve had some grim themes this year (e.g., swan songs), but this is the most macabre by far. Luckily, the albums themselves were not as grisly.

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#7 Midnight Love by Marvin Gaye (1982 - Death: Shot by father)

Along with Here, My Dear and That Stubborn Kinda’ Fellow, this is the third Marvin Gaye album we’ve heard this year. And it continues my unpopular theory that “Gaye might have been at his best when he was still firmly within the Motown machine.”

It’s not that Midnight Love is a bad album. The groove on “Sexual Healing” is eternal. But the songwriting on Gaye’s early records is just so tight. Certain songs on Midnight Love, like “Joy” and “Third World Girl,” are just a bit clunkier than something 1960s Motown would have put their stamp on. But Marvin Gaye is singing on this album. So, even when the material left me wanting more, his voice still holds everything together.

#6 Old Time Banjo Pickin’ & Singin’ by Stringbean (1961 - Death: Shot by area men looking for cash)

I think understanding how Stringbean died is actually helpful in understanding his music. David “Stringbean” Akeman was born in the very small town of Annville, Kentucky, in 1915. He got his first banjo in the 1920s and started playing local shows, eventually picking up the nickname “Stringbean” for his long, thin stature. Parlaying his banjo skills with an ability to sing and make jokes, Stringbean became a mainstay in some American households as a regular on the Grand Ole Opry and Hee Haw.

Stringbean, never rich and famous, carved out a nice career for himself. But his attitudes, especially around money, remained shaped by living through the Great Depression. Rumors circulated that the banjo player and his wife often carried large amounts of cash on them because of their distrust of banks. After returning home from a performance at the Opry, they were ambushed and killed by two people from the area. Later convicted, one cousin died in prison while the other was granted parole after 41 years behind bars.

I tell this depressing story because Stringbean’s old-time attitudes also shaped his music. He’s picking songs on the banjo that sound like they were pulled from the earth. He’s singing about greasy skillets and cheap cotton and how certain hairstyles represent a moral failing. These are songs that you can only do justice to if you live a life like Stringbean.

#5 King Size Soul by King Curtis (1967 - Death: Stabbed during altercation with neighbor)

My knowledge of the saxophone is not deep enough to tell you if King Curtis is the greatest to pick up the instrument, but I can say with certainty that the man knew how to make the instrument sing. King Curtis was best known as a session man, playing on songs like “Respect” by Aretha Franklin and “Yakety Yak” by The Coasters. But he also found occasional success releasing instrumentals.

King Size Soul is a collection of instrumental renditions of hits of the 1960s, along with some originals. King Curtis’s sax sings so lyrically across these tracks that you might start to think that most of these songs didn’t need words. His cover of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is a great example of this, especially as the melody soars during the chorus.

#4 Jaco Pastorius by Jaco Pastorius (1976 - Death: Beaten to death by a bouncer)

I think the most ridiculous recording we’ve heard this year is Jaco Pastorius’s “Donna Lee.” Attributed to Charlie Parker, “Donna Lee” is a lightning fast bebop standard that was not meant to be played as a solo bass piece. Pastorius’s ability to pull it off is proof enough that nobody has ever outplayed him on the four-stringed instrument.

That said, “Donna Lee” still had me worried. It’s the first song on Pastorius’s self-titled record. It made me concerned that I was in for an hour of solo bass. I say this with only complete love for the bass players in my life, but the bass is not a solo instrument. Listening to an album of solo bass would probably be as enjoyable as an album of solo tuba.

Luckily, “Donna Lee” is a bit of an outlier. You do get some other twoodling solo compositions, like “Portrait of Tracy,” but the rest of the album, while cerebral, is more accessible. Something like “Come On, Come Over” could have been a disco hit.

#3 Dreaming of You by Selena (1995 - Death: Shot by agent during a contractual dispute)

Often when trying to capture how Bad Bunny has grown so popular, people point to his ability to combine contemporary trap and hip-hop production with elements of traditional Latin music. It’s something for the kids and something for the parents. Selena was doing the same thing 30 years ago.

Selena Quintanilla got her start in show business singing as a teen in her family band, Selena y Los Dinos. The group initially focused on Tejano music, but Selena’s ambitions proved a bit bigger than the regional genre. Her solo releases began to find larger and larger audiences.

Then tragedy struck. In 1994, the young star brought Yolanda Saldívar on as her agent. Saldívar immediately caused problems. When the Quintanillas realized that Saldívar was embezzling funds, they attempted to sever ties. Selena went to visit her when she had failed to deliver financial records. Saldívar pulled out a gun and shot Selena. She was pronounced dead about an hour later. Saldívar was sentenced to life in prison with possibility of parole. In 2025, her appeal for parole was denied.

In the wake of her tragic, headline-making death, EMI assembled an album of previously recorded material that was supposed to constitute her next album. Dreaming of You was not a rejection of her Tejano roots, but it was a deliberate attempt at a pop crossover. As Bad Bunny would do decades later, it was a success.

Songs like “I’m Getting Used to You” and “Wherever You Are (Donde Quiera Que Estés)” saw her working with major American pop songwriters, like Diane Warren and Desmond Child. Others, like “El Toro Relajo” and “Techno Cumbia,” see her leaning more heavily on her Mexican roots. A good balance of these two sides is “God’s Child (Baila Conmigo),” a collaboration with The Talking Heads’ David Byrne that somehow works. As Latin music came to crossover more throughout the 1990s, it’s undoubted that Selena would have been a huge star.

#2 Sittin’ by the Road by Blaze Foley (2010 - Death: Shot by friend’s son over financial dispute)

Blaze Foley is one of those mythical artists, much like his friend Townes Van Zandt, whose influence on songwriters far outstrips his influence on the general listening public. Foley’s career is far stranger than many of his contemporaries, though. In fact, most of his music went missing. Here is a selection of descriptions of his records from BlazeFoley.com:

• Blaze Foley Inside (LP, 1980): Recorded at Loma Ranch Studios near Kerrville, Texas. The master tapes, which Blaze carried around to show people, were stolen from Blaze’s car.

• Blaze Foley (Vinyl LP, 1984): Blaze’s first eponymous album by Vital Records, it was pressed but never distributed. The executive producer was arrested and entered into the witness protection program. Blaze got boxes of the albums to give to friends and barter.

• “Oval Room” b/w “Girl Scout Cookies” (45 RPM single, 1984): From the Vital Records LP entitled Blaze Foley, recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It was pressed and some promotional copies sent out, but due to the executive producer getting busted, they were mostly distributed to friends by Blaze.

• Blaze Foley (LP, 1988): Blaze’s second eponymous album was never pressed … Heartland Records became interested in the project and, through Townes Van Zandt’s executive producer, Harold F. Eggers Jr., eventually got Blaze to sign a contract for distribution of the album. But Blaze was killed before the album could be finished and the master tapes disappeared over legal concerns, eventually being irreparably damaged in a flood.

When you combine this series of mishaps with the fact that Foley was shot and killed by his son’s friend, you’ve got a life filled with bad luck. But lucky for us, some of Foley’s recordings have found the light of day. The man could seriously write a song, using the simplest words to evoke deep emotions. If you want to be a songwriter, the posthumous Sittin’ by the Road is a great place to begin your studies.

#1 Ready to Die by The Notorious B.I.G. (1994 - Death: Unsolved drive-by shooting)

I had already heard this album, which is generally a no-no for our weekly listening. But Ken figured that given our morbid theme and the name of this album, it was a must. I agreed.

Ready to Die is the album this week that most readily dealt with death. Nearly every song is packed with vivid violent imagery. A track like “Suicidal Thoughts” is also a particularly harrowing listen given Biggie’s fate not long after it came out.

Ready to Die is a great album because Biggie is a gifted storyteller. But it is a cultural touchstone because it doesn’t really matter what Biggie is telling us about. His cadence, flow, and tone are so compelling that the content of his raps almost doesn’t matter.

Ready to Die’s only faults are the same as many of the other 1990s hip-hop albums we’ve listened to this year. First, it is a bit too long. Even the most gifted storyteller will struggle to hold your attention for an hour-and-fifteen-minutes. Cut out a few songs, and this album becomes tight. Second, every sex skit from the rap universe has aged poorly. I know you’re having sex, Biggie. I don’t need a reenactment.

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