Jack Nitzsche

Infobox musical artist
Name = Jack Nitzsche

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Img_capt = Photo by Brian Ashley White
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Background = non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth_name = Bernard Alfred Nitzsche
Alias =
Born = birth date|1937|4|22
Chicago, Illinois
Died = death date and age|2000|8|25|1937|4|22
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Origin =
Instrument = Saxophone, piano
Voice_type =
Genre = Rock, jazz, classical
Occupation = Composer, orchestrator, arranger, session musician, record producer
Years_active = 1955-2000
Label =
Associated_acts = Sonny Bono, Phil Spector, The Wrecking Crew, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, The Rolling Stones, Willy DeVille
URL =
Current_members =
Past_members =
Notable_instruments =

Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche (April 22 1937 – August 25 2000) was an arranger, producer, songwriter and Academy Award-winning film score composer.

Biography

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 and Crack the Sky. His own instrumental composition "The Lonely Surfer" became a minor hit, as did a big-band swing arrangement of Link Wray's "Rumble".

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. In later years, an embittered Nitzsche would allege that Spector received disproportionate credit for his contributions to what the former described as an equitable collaboration.

Besides Spector, he worked closely with West Coast session musicians such as Leon Russell, Glen Campbell, Carol Kaye, and Hal Blaine in a group 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.

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 albums "The Rolling Stones, Now!" (or "The Rolling Stones No. 2" in the UK), "Out of Our Heads", "Aftermath" and "Between the Buttons" as well as the hit singles "Paint It Black" and "Let's Spend the Night Together" and the choral arrangements for "You Can't Always Get What You Want". In 1968, Nitzsche introduced the band to slide guitarist Ry Cooder, a seminal influence on the band's 1969-1973 style.

Some of Nitzsche's most enduring rock productions were conducted in collaboration with Neil Young, beginning with his production and arrangement of Buffalo Springfield's "Expecting To Fly", considered by many critics to be a touchstone of the psychedelic era. In 1968, he produced Young's eponymously titled solo debut with David Briggs. Even as the singer's style veered from the baroque to rootsy hard rock, Young continued to work with Nitzsche on some of his most commercially successful solo recordings, most notably "Harvest". Nitzsche played electric piano with Crazy Horse throughout 1970 (a representative performance can be heard on the "Live at the Fillmore East" album) and went on to produce their sans-Young debut album a year later.

While prolific and hard working throughout the seventies, he suffered increasingly from depression and substance abuse problems. After castigating Young in a drunken 1974 interview, the two men became estranged for several years and would only collaborate sporadically thereafter; later that year, he was dropped from the Reprise Records roster after recording a scathing song criticizing executive Mo Ostin. This culminated in his arrest for a violent assault on longtime girlfriend Carrie Snodgress, formerly Young's companion, in 1979.

In 1979, he produced Graham Parker's album "Squeezing Out Sparks". Nitzsche produced three Willy DeVille albums beginning in the late 1970s: "Cabretta" (1977), "Return to Magenta" (1978), and "Coup de Grace" (1981). Nitzsche said that DeVille was the best singer he had ever worked with. ["See" Edmonds, Ben (2001) Liner notes to "Cadillac Walk: The Mink DeVille Collection." Edmonds wrote, "During my last conversation with Nitzsche, only months before his death last year, the irascible old witch doctor couldn't stop taking about the new album he'd been plotting with Willy (DeVille), and how DeVille was the best singer he had ever worked with.]

In the late 1970s 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 Best Song for co-writing (with Buffy Sainte-Marie) 'Up Where We Belong' from 1982's "An Officer and a Gentleman". 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 "The Exorcist", "Performance", "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Starman".

His intensive output declined somewhat in the 1990s though there were occasional creative works like the soundtrack of "Revenge" (1990). In the mid-1990s, a clearly inebriated Nitzsche was seen in an episode of the reality show COPS, being arrested in Hollywood after brandishing a gun at some youths who had stolen his hat. In attempting to explain himself to the arresting officers he is heard exclaiming that he was an Academy Award winner. In 1997, he expressed interest in producing a comeback album for Wray, although this never materialized due to their mutually declining health.

In 1983, he married Canadian/Native American folk singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. His first wife was blue-eyed soul singer Gracia Ann May; they divorced in 1974. In the 1990s, he was frequently seen once more in the company of Snodgress.

He died in Hollywood in 2000 of cardiac arrest brought on by a recurring bronchial infection.

Discography

* 1972 : "St. Giles Cripplegate"
* 1978 : OSR Blue Collar
* 1991 : OSR The Indian Runner with David Lindley
* 2007 : OSR Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (Reuses "The Last Race" as opening theme.)

Filmography

*The Crossing Guard (1995)
*Blue Sky (1994)
*The Indian Runner (1991)
*Mermaids (1990)
*The Hot Spot (1990)
*The Last of the Finest (1990)
*Revenge (1990)
*Next of Kin (1989)
*The Seventh Sign (1988)
*Streets of Gold (1986)
*The Whoopee Boys (1986)
*Stand by Me (1986)
*9½ Weeks (1986)
*Stripper (1986)
*The Jewel of the Nile (1985)
*Starman (1984)
*The Razor's Edge (1984)
*Windy City (1984)
*Breathless (1983)
*Without a Trace (1983)
*An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)
*Cannery Row (1982)
*Personal Best (1982)
*Heart Beat (1980)
*Cruising (1980)
*When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? (1979)
*Hardcore (1979)
*Blue Collar (1978)
*Heroes (1977)
*One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
*Moment to Moment (1975)
*Sticks and Bones (1973)
*Greaser's Palace (1972)
*Performance (1970)
*Village of the Giants (1965)

External links

*allmusicguide | id = 11:w9foxq85ldae| label = Jack Nitzsche
*imdb name|0006217
* [http://www.spectropop.com/JackNitzsche/ The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a fan site]
* [http://www.geocities.com/cheatersx/nitzsche.htm Jack Nitzsche discography]
* [http://www.spectropop.com/JackNitzsche/discography.htm Nitzsche discography at Spectropop]

References