Jerry Garcia

As one of the founding members and main figurehead of the Grateful Dead, guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia helped carry the torch of the 1960s counterculture for over three decades while inadvertently becoming a cultural icon whose legendary band became one of the highest-grossing touring acts of all time. Through the band's many years of success, Garcia remained deeply dedicated to playing music, often branching out in numerous directions outside of the Grateful Dead with various entities that included the Jerry Garcia Band, as well as other offshoots and collaborations with a wide array of musicians. By blending such diverse styles as rock, folk, bluegrass and jazz, Garcia became noted for his highly distinctive style of playing that generated swirling guitar solos and unusual chord voicings steeped in improvisation. Because of this, Garcia stood out among his more mainstream contemporaries while happily remaining on the fringes of popular music. With the release of their twelfth studio album, In the Dark (1987), which featured their only Top 10 single, "Touch of Grey," the Grateful Dead finally achieved mainstream success, resulting in a huge influx of fans, though such popularity came at a price of swelling crowds to almost unsustainable levels. Although he died on Aug. 9, 1995, after suffering a heart attack in his sleep, there was no doubt that Garcia left an undeniable mark upon music that generated generations of new fans well after his death.