Jack Nitzsche | |
---|---|
Photo by Brian Ashley White
|
|
Background information | |
Birth name | Bernard Alfred Nitzsche |
Born |
Chicago, Illinois, United States |
April 22, 1937
Died | August 25, 2000 Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States |
(aged 63)
Genres | Rock, jazz, classical |
Occupation(s) | Composer, orchestrator, arranger, session musician, record producer |
Instruments | Saxophone, piano |
Years active | 1955–2000 |
Associated acts | The Nooney Rickett 4, Sonny Bono, Phil Spector, The Wrecking Crew, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, The Rolling Stones, Willy DeVille |
Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche (22 April 1937 – 25 August 2000) was an American musician, arranger, producer, songwriter, and film score composer. He first came to prominence in the late 1950s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and others. He also worked extensively in film scores, notably for films such as Performance, The Exorcist and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. In 1983, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for co-writing "Up Where We Belong".
Born in Chicago, Illinois, to German immigrant parents, and raised on a farm in Newaygo, Michigan, Nitzsche moved to Los Angeles, California in 1955 with ambitions of becoming a jazz saxophonist. He found work copying musical scores, where he met Sonny Bono, with whom he wrote the song "Needles and Pins" for Jackie DeShannon, later covered by the Searchers and many others. His own instrumental composition "The Lonely Surfer" entered Cash Box August 3, 1963, became a minor hit (#37 Cash Box), as did a big-band swing arrangement of Link Wray's "Rumble".