KNOXVILLE (WATE) – Death claimed transcendent political figures in 2016, including Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, but it also took away royals of a different sort: kings of pop music, from Prince and David Bowie to George Michael, and a princess of pop culture, actress Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds.

Other artists and entertainers who died in 2016 included author Harper Lee, conductor Pierre Boulez, musicians Leonard Cohen, Merle Haggard, Maurice White, Frank Sinatra Jr. and Phife Dawg, and actors Gene Wilder, Abe Vigoda, Florence Henderson, Alan Rickman, Robert Vaughn, Garry Shandling, Doris Roberts, Alan Thicke, Fyvush Finkel and Anton Yelchin.

  • January 10: David Bowie, 69, singer
  • January 14: Alan Rickman, 69, star of stage and ‘Harry Potter’
  • January 14: Rene Angelil, 73, husband of Celine Dion
  • January 15: Dan Haggerty, 74, Actor in The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams
  • January 18: Glenn Frey, 67, Eagles founding member
  • January 24: John Jay Hooker, 90, Nashville attorney, activist
  • January 26: Abe Vigoda, 94, actor, detective Phil Fish in ‘Barney Miller’
  • January 30: Georgia Davis Powers, 92, First woman, and African-American Kentucky State Senator
  • May 2: Afeni Shakur, 69, political activist, mother of rap legend Tupac Shakur
  • March 6: Nancy Reagan, 94, an American actress and wife of the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan
  • May 12: Julius La Rosa, 86, singer
  • May 19: Morley Safer, 84, ’60 Minutes’ correspondent
  • May 19: Alan Young, 96, star of 1960s sitcom ‘Mr. Ed’