Jack Nitzsche

Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche is known as the right-hand man of producer Phil Spector and for his work with the Rolling Stones and Neil Young. He has also worked extensively in film music. But he scored his first pop successes under the Reprise label with his instrumental "The Lonely Surfer" in 1963.

In 1970, he began a career as a film composer with Performance, by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg. This was followed by The Exorcist, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Hot Spot...

In January 1974, Nitzsche recorded a self-titled album at Cinderella Studios in Madison, Tennessee. The project was a collaboration with underground filmmaker Robert Downey. However, it was pulled from the schedule by the head of the Warner Bros. label. The album remained unreleased, abandoned in a North Hollywood warehouse. That is until Rhino Handmade included all eleven tracks in their collection Jack Nitzsche Three Piece Suit: The Reprise Recordings 1971-1974. A long-out-of-print CD, it was released to critical acclaim in 2001. It is now available again on vinyl under the artist's eponymous name.

In 1983, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for co-writing "Up Where We Belong."