More rockers - Duane Allman almost certainly, Stevie Ray Vaughn, arguably. A little hard to say of the latter’s career trajectory at that point, but I think you could make a solid claim he was riding high.
Stevie Ray’s career was at or just past its peak when he died.
Randy Rhodes was Ozzy’s guitarist and generally regarded as the hottest metal guitarist at the time of his death.
Bruce Lee and his son Brandon both come to mind.
Patsy Cline was at her peak when she was killed in a plane crash in 1963. She was only 31, had several crossover hits and even headlined in Vegas the year before she died. She was like Elvis – she could sing anything – pop, gospel, country, rockin’ stuff.
Cliff Burton from Metallica. Metallica was just reaching major success when he died, and frankly, I don’t think the band ever recovered.
River Phoenix seemed to have a very bright future when he died.
Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin?
Came in to state Kurt Cobain and Brandon Lee, both already covered. While Nirvana’s recently-released In Utero hadn’t been as commercially successful as Nevermind (though as time has passed it seems it’s become more critically successful), and he was having quite public problems with depression, addictions, physical illness, and his marriage, his death still was a pretty big blow/shock to a lot of people; he still seemed to be at the start of a promising career. And Brandon Lee’s height of popularity actually continued to rise after he died; it’s rather morbid to contemplate, but his death and the subject matter of The Crow combined to propel both him and the movie to greater success than either would have been expected.
Jon-Erik Hexum was a young, up-and-coming TV star/model who’d starred in a couple of TV movies and starred in one season of The Voyagers and had just begun the starring role in an action series called Cover Up. On the show’s set, he put a gun loaded with blanks to his head and fired (I recall at the time it happened, folks were saying he had done it as a joke)… unfortunately, blanks still contain wadding, and can inure or kill if fired at point-blank range into a sensitive spot. He died from his injuries several days later. (Presumably his career height would have continued to go up had he not died; he was a fresh face and only 26.)
River Phoenix’s career was at a steady, fairly lofty plateau when he died at the age of 23; he had already been in a blockbuster (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), nominated for an Oscar 5 years before he died, been in multiple critically-acclaimed arthouse features, was Anne Rice’s choice for the vampire Lestat, helped finance the first House of Blues… and then died pathetically on a sidewalk of a drug overdose.
Sam Kinison
Harry Chapin
John F. Kennedy
A writer whose name escapes me. I want to say **Izzard **(?) He wrote a Chicago based crime thriller that was a best seller and the title escapes me too. He died under gruesome and mysterious circumstances at a downtown hotel around the mid 90s.
Can’t recall the name this moment, but there was that writer and writing teacher who killed himself last year. Never heard of him till he died and then read his stuff and was very impressed. He was an amazing writer.
Found him.
I’m gonna go way back, with a painter, Vincent Van Gogh. He didn’t achieve popular success during his life, but as an artist, he had achieved artistic success, and at age 37, shot himself. How do we categorize that?
I was going to say him- IIRC, wasn’t he or his brother Theo on the verge of making a big sale on his works right when he shot himself?
According to The Nomi Song, Klaus Nomi was on the verge of massive success in Japan, planning a big tour there when he began to succumb to AIDS.
Byron Shelleykeats. Georges Bizet. Christopher Marlowe. Sylvia Plath. John Wilkes Booth.
Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Bon Scott.
Otis Redding and Sam Cooke.
Leslie Howard.
Actually, Dean died before he reached the height of success. His last movie had been filmed, but not released when he was killed. After it was released, people recognized his great quality performance. It’s likely that he would have gone on to even better performances had he survived.
British musician Nick Drake. Granted, he may have been more successful posthumously, but he did die at his creative height.
American comic book artist Mike Wieringo died very young and at the top of his game.
Poet Philip Sidney, who was killed at the Battle of Zutphen in 1586. A Lord Byron-like character who idealistically went off to battle and died “romantically.”
A whole bunch of jazz musicians: Charlie Parker, Bix Beiderbecke, Bunny Berigan, Frank Teschemacher, Fats Waller, Charlie Christian, Chu Berry, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Eddie Lang, Bennie Moten, Jaco Pastorius, Bud Powell, Django Reinhardt, Dinah Washington, Chick Webb. . .
Carole Lombard