I wrote this for another board.

Am posting due to how overwhelming the numbers are, not to be in poor taste.

Major artists who've passed in The last 2 1/2 years (2015-2017) (I'm sure I left some out):

Allan Holdsworth
Andy Fraser (Free)
B.B. King
Buffin (Mott The Hoople Drummer)
Chris Cornell
Chris Squire
Chuck Berry
Dan Hicks
Dave Swarbrick (Fairport Convention)
David Bowie
Glen Frey
Greg Lake
Gregg Allman
J Geils
Joe Ely (There's question about this one. I found it cited in a Google search).
John Wetton
Keith Emerson
Leon Russell
Leonard Cohen
Paul Kantner
Prince
Sam Andrew (Joplin lead guitarist in her 1st 2 bands)
Scott Weiland

I was going to add Allen Lanier, and then I realized it's been almost 4 years since we lost him

Yeah, I miss the "Dead Rock Stars Club" site, which hasn't been updated in many months, and I can't find anything similar that's near as thorough.

This doesn't even touch the list and you include some very obscure people but leave out Lemmy?

Ian Fraser Kilmister (Lemmy)

I thought that list was too small, but from 30 minutes of Googling those were all the names I found that were major to me.

As far as Lemmy, I probably should have included him; that style of metal is so foreign to my reality that it didn't cross my mind.

James Cotton

Did you mean Jack Ely of The Kingsmen? Texas singer-songwriter Joe Ely, member of The Flatlanders is still alive and well, unless I missed some very recent news. He just played Antones a couple of weeks ago. His FB page makes no mention of his passing, nor did I find any news stories of such.

I found Ely through Google. I was surprised to see that also. I used so many sources that I'm not able to spend 30 minutes Googling right now; but if you Google something Like "Musicians who passed away in 2015 & the same substituting 2016 & read most of the results you'll find the source I found for that.

I'm glad he's still alive!

None of the sources I reviewed listed Cotton or I would have likely included him.