Jack Nitzsche
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Bernard Alfred ("Jack") Nitzsche (Chicago, April 22, 1937 – Hollywood, August 25, 2000) was an integral presence in the history of popular music in the 20th century. In his late teens he moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, 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. His own instrumental composition 'The Lonely Surfer' became a minor hit.
He eventually became arranger and conductor for the influential producer Phil Spector, and orchestrated the ambitious Wall of Sound for the song 'River Deep, Mountain High' by Ike and Tina Turner. Working closely with West Coast session musicians such as Leon Russell, Glen Campbell, Carol Kaye, and Hal Blaine, they created the backing music for numerous sixties pop recordings by various artists such as The Monkees.
While organizing the music for the T.A.M.I. Show television special in 1964, he met The Rolling Stones, and went on to contribute the keyboard textures to their mid-sixties hits such as 'Paint It Black', and the choral arrangements for 'You Can't Always Get What You Want'.
His masterpiece was the shimmering unearthly orchestration for the Neil Young composition 'Expecting to Fly' created for Buffalo Springfield's second album, released in 1967. He then collaborated with Young on some of his most commercially successful solo recordings such as 'Harvest', as well as the less successful but influential Tonight's The Night album.
In 1969, he married Canadian/Native American folk singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie.
While prolific and hard working throughout the seventies, he suffered increasingly from depression and substance abuse problems, culminating in his arrest for a violent assault on actress Carrie Snodgress in 1979, whom he was dating.
Nitzsche had also worked on film scores throughout his career, such as the distinctive soundtracks for 'The Exorcist' and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. In the eighties he began to concentrate more on film music rather than pop music, and became one of the most prolific film orchestrators in Hollywood at the time, winning an Academy Award for 'An Officer and A Gentleman'.
His intensive output declined somewhat in the nineties. He died in Los Angeles in the year 2000 of a respiratory illness.
Jack Nitzsche was mythologized as 'The Dark Prince' in Jimmy McDonough's biography of Neil Young, 'Shakey'.
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