Artists Whose First Album Was Released After They Died

Robert Johnson, born in Mississippi in 1911, is perhaps the most influential of all blues singers. He wasn’t very successful in his lifetime, as he mostly performed on street corners and in juke joints, but he thankfully managed to record 29 songs across two recording sessions before passing away at age 27 in 1938. Contemporaries and musicologists kept his music alive until Columbia Records finally released a collection of his recordings in 1961, which exposed him to a wider audience and strongly influenced musicians including Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, and Keith Richards.

Born James Thomas Ramey in 1944, Baby Huey (nicknamed after the giant duckling cartoon character due to his large size) was a performer who began adding spoken rhymes to his songs in the late 1960s, a precursor to the rapping that emerged in the following decade. He toured widely in the US but didn’t record an album until shortly before his death of a drug-related heart attack in 1970, at age 26. The album was released the following year, and is today considered a classic.

Florence Ballard was a founding member of the Supremes (along with Diana Ross and Mary Wilson), and sang on ten of their No. 1 hits between 1963 and 1967. She was fired from the group due to her drinking in ’67, and after years away from the spotlight she began planning a comeback in 1975. Sadly, she passed away from a heart attack caused by a blood clot the following year. In 2002, a compilation album was released of her solo recordings from a 1968 session as well as earlier Supremes songs she sang lead on.

Steve Gaines is best known as a guitarist and backing vocalist on Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd; he had sadly only been in the band for a year and a half before he was killed (along with his sister Cassie and lead singer Ronnie Van Zant) in a plane crash in October 1977. His only solo album, “One in the Sun,” was recorded in 1975 before he joined Skynyrd; it was released in 1988, 11 years after his death.

During his lifetime, Chris Bell was best known as a guitarist and vocalist on the criminally underappreciated power pop band Big Star, alongside singer-songwriter Alex Chilton. He left the band in 1972 to focus on solo work, but died in a car crash in 1978 at age 27. Several of his solo recordings were released posthumously in the 1992 album “I Am the Cosmos.”

British musician Chris Wood was a founding member of the rock band Traffic (fronted by Steve Winwood), and co-wrote their hit “Dear Mr. Fantasy.” After Traffic’s 1974 breakup he became an in-demand session musician, but problems with drugs and alcohol led to his death from liver disease in 1983 at age 39. Wood was working on a solo album at the time of his death; even though it was incomplete, it was released in 2008.

Guy McDonough was a singer and rhythm guitarist with the influential Aussie rock band Australian Crawl, which achieved renown in its native country but had limited success elsewhere. He died of drug-related illness at age 28 in 1984. He had recorded a series of demos before his death, which were compiled into an album and released the following year.

Richard Manuel was best known as the pianist and one of three lead vocalists in the Canadian-American rock band The Band. He struggled with substance abuse throughout his life, and died by suicide in 1986. Manuel never recorded a proper solo album, but in 2002 recordings from two intimate live shows performed in 1985 at a club in Saugerties, New York, were released.

A Russian singer-songwriter and poet, Alexander Bashlachev was a rock musician who performed at parties and music festivals in the Soviet Union. He died in 1988 after falling from a window; his cause of death, though unverified, was ultimately ruled a suicide. The following year, an album of his songs, which were recorded at a friend’s apartment in 1986, was released.

A protege of legendary Allman Brothers slide guitarist Duane Allman, Gerry Groom recorded an album, titled “Once in a Blue Moon” with one time Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor in 1992, but passed away before it could be released. After his label dropped the project, an independent label named Shattered Music picked it up. It remains a rarity.

The Australian co-founder, songwriter, and frontman of hugely popular rock band INXS, Michael Hutchence killed himself in 1997 at age 37. He had started working on a solo album in 1995 in-between INXS sessions and continued working on it up to three days before his death. The self-titled album was released two years after his passing.

Joey Ramone was the lead vocalist for the seminal punk rock band The Ramones. He died of lymphoma in 2001, shortly before turning 50. His solo debut, “Don’t Worry About Me,” released less than a year later, features a notable cover of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”

Lionel Du Fon Pickens, also known as Chinx Drugs and later Chinx, was a Queens-born rapper born in 1983 who was a member of the Rockaway Riot Squad and appeared on French Montana’s Coke Boys mixtapes. He was killed in a drive-by shooting in May 2015, and his debut record, “Welcome to JFK,” was released less than three months later. A second posthumous album, “Legends Never Die,” dropped the following year.

British rapper Cadet (né Blaine Cameron Johnson) released a number of freestyles on YouTube and other streaming platforms, but is best known for his platinum-certified single “Advice,” which peaked at No. 14 on the U.K. Singles Chart. He died after being hit head-on by a drunk driver at age 28 in February 2019. His debut album, “The Rated Legend,” was released the following year, and included several previously-released singles as well as previously unreleased material.

Brooklyn-born rapper Pop Smoke shot to fame with the release of his breakout singles “Welcome to the Party” and “Dior” in 2019, and he collaborated with several notable U.K. drill rappers and released celebrated mixtapes in 2019 and 2020. Less than two weeks after the second mixtape release, he was murdered during a home invasion in Los Angeles, passing away at age 20. 50 Cent produced his debut album, which was released posthumously in July 2020 and debuted at No.1 on the Billboard 200.