Jack Nitzsche
American musician, composer, arranger
Who was Jack Nitzsche?
Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche ( NEECH-ee; April 22, 1937 – August 25, 2000) was an American musician, arranger, songwriter, composer, and record producer. Nitzsche was born in Chicago and raised on a farm in Newaygo, Michigan, the son of German immigrants. He came to prominence in the early 1960s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spector, and went on to work with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and others. He worked extensively in film scores for the films Performance, The Exorcist and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He moved to Los Angeles in 1955 with ambitions of becoming a jazz saxophonist. He was hired by Sonny Bono, who was at the time an A&R executive at Specialty Records, as a music copyist. While there, Nitzsche wrote a novelty hit titled "Bongo Bongo Bongo".
With Bono, Nitzsche wrote the song "Needles and Pins" for Jackie DeShannon, later recorded by the Searchers. His instrumental composition "The Lonely Surfer" entered the Cash Box top 100 on August 3, 1963, and reached No. 37.
Historical significance
In 1983, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for co-writing "Up Where We Belong" with Buffy Sainte-Marie.