Johann Pachelbel. So many modern songs reuse the melody from his Canon in D. I just think, it'd be fun to let him listen to them. Would probably blow his mind to listen to modern music, to begin with, and then to have it be his melody, too. 🙃

Seriously, so many great suggestions from other people.

I'm going to throw out Neil Peart, although I'm not sure he'd appreciate it. Selfishly, I'd love to have him back.

Orpheus. I bet he’d do great fronting a metal band.

Easy: Duke Ellington

John Lennon

Bradley Nowell. Sublime was so good, and none of the bands that have followed in their style have had the same lyricism that Nowell had, or have been able to really blend genres like they did to make something completely unique.

Peter Steele

Chuck Schuldiner. Greatest death metal vocalist to ever live.

Biggie Smalls

Eyedea

toots and the maytals

SOPHIE. Hyperpop hasn’t been the same since her passing.

Elliot Smith, no contest. Best singer songwriter ever.

Bob Marley.

Justin Townes Earle.

Bryn Jones aka Muslimgauze

Nightbirde

Piotr Grudziński of Riverside. It's clear to me their discography went completely different way than it could have after he died being only 41.

FZ

Can't believe nobody else has mentioned him yet

Colter Wall, not that he's dead yet but im gonna save it if he dies before me.

Stan Rogers. Would pretty much double the number of available sea shanties

Max Bennett. He's not famous famous but he's well known enough in the jazz scene. He played with Frank Sinatra, Dizzie Gillespie, and recorded on countless studio sessions. I knew him personally and I think was his last student before he passed. Some people closer to him than me told me one of the last things he said was "I need to give jcabral9 his lesson" and it makes me tear up whenever I think about it. I was too young to understand most of his concepts--I wish I could know him as an adult and professional musician myself.

Chuck Schuldiner, frontman of death metal pioneers Death, dude died of cancer in 2001 at the age of 34. I never had the chance to see them play live but their records are incredible.

Cliff Burton, Bass player of Metallica, died when the band's tour bus crashed and he was crushed underneath it. The band lost part of its soul and it took them a very long time to get over Cliffs death. Seeing videos of him playing live makes one understand what was lost, as he was an incredible musician.

On a more general note every artist that died very young, many made a big impact to their genre or even to a wider audience without it ever knowing.

Gabe Serbian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpYhctLdCVk

Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Sure, there are plenty of musicians who had a bigger impact on music as a whole, but NOBODY I've ever seen was more in tune with the universe than Stevie when he was playing.

As far as I can tell, he didn't actually play the guitar. He just acted as a conduit to channel music directly from the universe through a guitar. I don't think he ever once had to pause and consider what to play next when he was improvising, it just flowed out of him non-stop.

He had already started getting even better, having finally gotten sober, and it kills my soul every time I think about what else he could've given us had he not gotten on that helicopter.