Jack Nitzsche
| Jack Nitzsche | |
|---|---|
Photo by Brian Ashley White
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Bernard Alfred Nitzsche |
| Born |
April 22, 1937 Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Died | August 25, 2000 (aged 63) Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States |
| 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 |
| Notable instruments | |
| Saxophone, piano | |
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, winning a song of the year Oscar in 1983 for co-writing "Up Where We Belong" (from An Officer and a Gentleman.)
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".
He eventually became arranger and conductor for producer Phil Spector and orchestrated the ambitious Wall of Sound for the song "River Deep, Mountain High" by Ike and Tina Turner. Besides Spector, he worked closely with West Coast session musicians such as Leon Russell, Roy Caton, Glen Campbell, Carol Kaye, and Hal Blaine in a group informally known as The Wrecking Crew. They created backing music for numerous sixties pop recordings by various artists such as The Beach Boys and The Monkees. Nitzsche also arranged the title song of Doris Day's Move Over, Darling that was a successful single on the pop charts of the time.
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