Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche (22 April 1937 – 25 August 2000) was an 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.
Born in Chicago, Illinois 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 Cher, The Searchers, The Ramones, Crack the Sky and Willy DeVille and Tom Petty with Stevie Nicks (Pack up the Plantation). His own instrumental composition "The Lonely Surfer" became a minor hit, as did a big-band swing arrangement of Link Wray's "Rumble".
In the 1970s he began to concentrate more on film music rather than pop music, and became one of the most prolific film orchestrators in Hollywood in the period, winning an Academy Award for Best Song for co-writing with Buffy Sainte-Marie "Up Where We Belong" from 1982's An Officer and a Gentleman (Nitzsche had already worked with Sainte-Marie on She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina in the early 1970s). Nitzsche had also worked on film scores throughout his career, such as his contributions to the Monkees movie Head, the theme music from Village of the Giants (recycling an earlier single, "The Last Race"), and the distinctive soundtracks for Performance, The Exorcist, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hardcore (1979), The Razor's Edge, and Starman (also 1984).
He died in Hollywood in 2000 of cardiac arrest brought on by a recurring bronchial infection.
* 1963: The Lonely Surfer
* 1964: Dance To The Hits Of The Beatles
* 1966: Chopin '66
* 1972 : St. Giles Cripplegate
* 1978 : OSR Blue Collar
* 1984 : OSR The Razor's Edge
* 1991 : OSR The Indian Runner with David Lindley
* 2007 : OSR Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (Reuses "The Last Race" as opening theme.)
Born in Chicago, Illinois 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 Cher, The Searchers, The Ramones, Crack the Sky and Willy DeVille and Tom Petty with Stevie Nicks (Pack up the Plantation). His own instrumental composition "The Lonely Surfer" became a minor hit, as did a big-band swing arrangement of Link Wray's "Rumble".
In the 1970s he began to concentrate more on film music rather than pop music, and became one of the most prolific film orchestrators in Hollywood in the period, winning an Academy Award for Best Song for co-writing with Buffy Sainte-Marie "Up Where We Belong" from 1982's An Officer and a Gentleman (Nitzsche had already worked with Sainte-Marie on She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina in the early 1970s). Nitzsche had also worked on film scores throughout his career, such as his contributions to the Monkees movie Head, the theme music from Village of the Giants (recycling an earlier single, "The Last Race"), and the distinctive soundtracks for Performance, The Exorcist, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hardcore (1979), The Razor's Edge, and Starman (also 1984).
He died in Hollywood in 2000 of cardiac arrest brought on by a recurring bronchial infection.
* 1963: The Lonely Surfer
* 1964: Dance To The Hits Of The Beatles
* 1966: Chopin '66
* 1972 : St. Giles Cripplegate
* 1978 : OSR Blue Collar
* 1984 : OSR The Razor's Edge
* 1991 : OSR The Indian Runner with David Lindley
* 2007 : OSR Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (Reuses "The Last Race" as opening theme.)
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