Music, Celebrity Deaths | featured news

Marvin Hamlisch, the singularly productive and sensationally decorated composer of musicals like "A Chorus Line" and songs like "The Way We Were," died in Los Angeles on Monday after a brief illness.

His manager, Mitchell Greenhill, said in a news release that Watson died Tuesday at Wake Forest Baptist Hospital Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Disco queen Donna Summer, whose pulsing anthems such as "Last Dance," "Love to Love You Baby" and "Bad Girls" became the soundtrack for a glittery age of sex, drugs, dance and flashy clothes, has died. She was 63.

Chuck Brown, known as the "Godfather of Go-Go," a genre blending funk, jazz and soul and other musical forms, died Wednesday, his manager said.

Beastie Boys rapper Adam Yauch has died at the age of 47, his New York publicist has confirmed. The star was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 but it is not clear whether his death was connected with the illness. Yauch had surgery and radiation therapy but said last year "reports of my being totally cancer free are exaggerated".

Levon Helm, a key member of the seminal rock group The Band who lent his distinctively Southern voice to classics like "The Weight" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," has died at age 71.

Whitney Houston was found by an assistant "lying face down in the bathtub filled with water" in a hotel room the day she died, according to the full autopsy report. The Los Angeles County coroner ruled that Houston's February 11 death was an accidental drowning with the "effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use" as contributing factors.

Whitney Houston died as the result of drowning in what the Los Angeles County coroner has ruled as an accidental death. The coroner said heart disease and cocaine use were also factors in her death on Feb. 11.

Davy Jones, British-born lead singer with 60s band The Monkees, dies aged 65, his publicist confirms.

Many of the biggest names in entertainment gathered Saturday to say celebrate and bid farewell to singer Whitney Houston in the church in Newark, N.J., where the late singer, who died on Feb. 11, started her singing career.