Is Your Favorite Singer a Member Of This Morbid Club?
The 27 Forever Club
The 27 Club, sometimes called the Forever 27 Club, is a group of musicians who all died at the age of 27. Here are 20 of its members.
1. Robert Johnson
One of the earliest members of the club, Robert Johnson was not famous during his lifetime. His work gained in popularity after his disappearance.
No one knew what happened to him until a music enthusiast found his death certificate 30 years later.
Legend goes he sold his soul to The Devil at a crossroads, in return for the ability to play guitar like no other musician before him.
Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, of unknown causes.
The above photo is one of the only three verified photos of Johnson.
2. Brian Jones
Jones started the Rolling Stones but was kicked out of the group because of his drug addiction.
On July3, 1969, when he was 37, he was found at the bottom of his swimming pool. The coroner’s report stated he died from drowning. Later, they noted it was “death by misadventure”, stating that his liver and heart were very enlarged by his drug and alcohol abuse.
3. Alan Wilson
Wilson was the leader and co-founder of Canned Heat, a popular blues band. On September 3, 1970, he was found dead on a hill behind the home of a bandmate, Bob Hite’s home.
He was 27. The cause of death was ruled accidental acute barbiturate intoxication.
4. Jimi Hendrix
Wildly popular Jimi Hendrix had a short career.
The details of his death are sketchy. On September 17, 1970, he spend the day with Monika Dannemann. She said that after dinner, she drove him to a friend’s house.
She picked him up at 3 a.m. and took him back to her home. When she woke about 11 a.m., Hedrix was unconscious. An ambulance took him to the hospital but he died two hours later on September 18.
The coroner stated he choked on his vomit, dying of asphyxiation, while on drugs. He was 27.
5. Janis Joplin
Joplin sang a mix of rock, soul, and blues, and was one of the most well-known singers the late 1960s.
On October 4, 1970, she was found dead in her hotel room by her road manager. She died of accidental heroin overdose at age 27.
6. Jim Morrison
The lead singer of The Doors, Morrison definitely had a wild side, as evidenced in his unpredictable performances.
He died in Paris at age 27.
He had an alcohol dependency. Since no autopsy was performed, there are disputes about the cause of death. Several claim they were there and his death was caused by an accidental heroin overdose.
7. Pete Ham
Ham was the lead singer of Badfinger, who sang the classic song “Without You”.
He committed suicide in 1975 at the age of 27. He was depressed about label and management problems of the band, and about finances.
8. Kurt Cobain
By Julie Kramer — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81219782
The lead singer of the iconic band Nirvana, Kurt Cobain was a rock idol in the early 1990s.
He struggled with heroin addiction, health problems, the pressures of fame, and his unstable relationship with his wife Courtney Love.
He had just come back from rehab, on April 8, 1994, when he was found dead at his home at the age of 27, from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.
9. Amy Winehouse
This jazz and soul singer was one of the UK’s most famous of her time.
At the age of 10, she was drawn to listen to American R&B and hip-hop acts, including TLC and Salt-N-Pepa, and she founded a short-lived amateur rap group called Sweet ‘n Sour.
She won five Grammy Awards connected to her 2006 album ‘Back to Black,’
Addicted to drugs and alcohol, she died in her apartment on July 23, 2011, at the age of 27. She had been drinking and listening to music until the early hours of the morning. Her blood alcohol levels were five time the legal limit.
10. Linda Jones
Jones was not famous but those most devoted to American soul music knew her work. Her songs were influenced greatly by American gospel from the rural south.
In 1967 she made Hypnotized, which hit the number four spot in Billboard Magazine’s R & B lists, and number 21 overall. She gained more success with the posthumous release of many of her records following her death in 1972.
She was one of the few of the 27 Club who died of natural causes. It was during a performance at the Apollo Theater that year that she went into a diabetic coma and died.
11. Leslie Harvey
Harvey performed with the Alex Harvey Soul Band after turning down an offer to join the popular group the Animals in the 1960s.
In 1965 he joined a group called Blues Council, which toured in the UK. While touring in Scotland, the band’s van crashed, killing two members.
Harvey later joined the band Cartoone, which was the opening act for Led Zeppelin during the group’s first United States tour. Later that same year, he was one of the founding members of the band Stone the Crows.
When Stone the Crows was performing at Swansea in 1972, Harvey touched a microphone that was not grounded and the guitarist was electrocuted.
Harvey was 27 years at the time of his fatal accident.
12. Ron McKernan (“Pigpen”)
The Grateful Dead had a reputation of being devoted users of various drugs, including LSD.
For Ron McKernan, or “Pigpen” as the band members called him, preferred alcohol and consumed it with vigor. He especially liked Thunderbird, a cheap wine, and Southern Comfort.
By his mid-twenties he showed ill effects on his health connected with chronic abuse. He passed out onstage sometimes.
He died March, 1973, of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage due to his years of alcohol abuse.
13. Jacob Miller
Miller was a reggae star on par with Bob Marley. He was unknown in the United States but in Jamaica he was popular. His band, Inner Circle, played popular American tunes in a reggae style
By the late 1970s he had recorded albums released internationally by Capitol Records. It appeared he was headed for international success.
He was known for smoking pot onstage, exchanging quips with other artists, and engaging his audience in the performance.
In 1980, his career ended when he was killed in an auto accident along with his son, in Jamaica. Of course, he was 27.
14. Chris Bell
Christopher Branford Bell was in the band Big Star, but he was also chasing a solo career.
He died on December 27, 1978, in a car accident when driving home from a band rehearsal.
His music gained popularity in the 1980s after his death.
15. Kim Jong-hyun
Popularly known as Jonghyun, Kim Jong-hyun was a South Korean singer, songwriter, producer, radio host, and an author.
He died on December 18, 2017, possibly a suicide, from a gunshot, inside a rented apartment.
Before his death, he was with the boy band Shinee in South Korea, where they released twelve albums.
16. Jesse Belvin
Belvin was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist who was popular in the 1950s. He was marketed as “the black Elvis”.
On July 10, 1949, Belvin did the opening act with Big Jay McNeely and Lionel Hampton at the 5th Cavalcade of Jazz.
His composition Earth Angel was eventually credited to him and Hollywood Flames singers Curtis Williams and Gaynel Hodge after a long legal battle.
Shortly after finishing a performance on a bill with Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and Marv Johnson, Belvin and his wife were killed in a head-on car crash, on February 6, 1960. He was 27.
17. Rudy Lewis
He began singing gospel music. He joined The Drifters as a replacement for Ben E. King.
He was lead vocalist for several hits including “Please Stay”, “Some Kind of Wonderful”, and “Up On The Roof”.
It was reported Lewis was a closet homosexual, addicted to heroin, and had a binge eating disorder. This was kept from the public until 1996 with the release of liner notes of the CB box set Rockin & Driftin.
On May 21, 1964, the group was due to record “Under The Boardwalk” which had been written for Lewis. However, he was found dead in his Harlem hotel room the previous night. Former lead vocalist Johnny Moore was brought back to perform lead vocal for the recording. The next day, the Drifters recorded “I Don’t Want To Go On Without You” in tribute to Lewis.
Although an autopsy was never performed, authorities ruled his death a probable drug overdose. He died at the age of 27.
In 1988, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
18. Malcolm Hale
Spanky and Our Gang was an AmerBy Emhale — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40514850ican “sunshine pop” band that had major hits in Canada and the United States.
Malcolm Hale played trombone and lead guitar and did vocals.
He had gone to bed drunk at his girlfriend’s house one night in 1968 and 28 hours later she found that he was dead.
He died of carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of a faulty space heater. He was 27.
19. Louis Chauvin
Louis Chauvin was a child prodigy, a brilliant pianist who created a constant stream of original melodies, but he seldom wrote them down or published them.
He quit school when he was 13 years old and ran away with his friend Sam Patterson to join the Alabama Jubilee Singers, an group that toured from St. Louis to western New York state and back.
Patterson and Chauvin started a singing group called the Mozart Comedy Four and became locally famous as the vaudeville duo of Chauvin & Patterson.
He was a rather frail child and later did nothing to improve his health with the alcohol and opiates he fancied. He also contracted venereal disease. He died of neurosyphilitic sclerosis on March 26, 1908, at the age of 27.
20. Fat Pat
Patrick Lamont Hawkins was a rapper from Houston, Texas, known as Fat Pat. He most prolific time was in the mid-1990s, along with his brother Big Hawk.
On February 3, 1998, he was shot and killed after collecting his fee from a promoter’s apartment.
His album release party two weeks later turned into sort of a wake attended by rap artists Scarface, Willie D, Lil’ Keke, DJ Screw, the Botany Boys, and South Park Mexican.
Fat Pat’s brother, Big Hawk, was also killed by gunshot on May 1, 2006.
I have only presented 20 members of the 27 Club. Here are a few more, but there have been 54 in all so far.
- Jean-Michel Basquiat: acclaimed musician, artist and recovering drug addict, found dead of an overdose in 1988
- Dickie Pride: British rock singer, overdosed on sleeping pills and died in 1968.
- Joe Henderson: gospel singer who had a pop/R&B crossover hit in 1962, found dead of a heart attack in 1964.
- Nat Jaffe: swing jazz musician, dying of complications of high blood pressure in 1945.
- Alexandre Levy: pianist and one of Brazil’s most important composers, died in 1892, cause unknown.
- Arlester “Dyke” Christian: funk musician, murdered in a drug deal.
- Roger Lee Durham: funk and soul musician, died in 1973 after being thrown off a horse.
- Wallace “Wally” Yohn: jazz-rock keyboardist, perished in a plane crash in 1974.
- Dave Alexander: exhibitionist musician, died of pulmonary edema due to pancreatitis.
- Gary Thain: British bassist, succumbed to respiratory failure brought on from a heroin overdose.
- Cecilia (born Evangelina Sobredo Galanes): Spanish singer-songwriter. died in a car accident.
- Helmut Köllen: German guitarist and bassist, died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning.
- Pete De Freitas: drummer, motorcycle accident took his life in 1989.
- Finbarr Donnelly: punk singer, drowned in 1989.
- Chris Austin: bluegrass musician, died in a plane crash.
Chances are, famous musicians have a shorter lifespan because of their access to drugs, hard living and the emotional self-medication that typically comes with the life of an artist, but many maintain there is some mystic element afoot concerning the 27 Club.
Jan Sebastian wrote a story about how “crazy” musicians can be. Good read!
Here is a story by Isa Nan about successful musicians who stayed drug-free:
