David Gans (Flickr user dgans, https://www.dgans.com/) · CC BY 2.0

Wrote "City of New Orleans," the train-journey ballad recorded by Arlo Guthrie, Willie Nelson, and Judy Collins among others, and won a 1985 Grammy for it as best country song. A lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, he also wrote the team's rallying anthem "Go Cubs Go." He died of leukemia in 1984, at 36, a diagnosis he had lived with for most of his adult career.