The Jewel of the Nile

Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche 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. He also worked extensively in film scores, winning a song of the year Oscar in 1983 for co-writing "Up Where We Belong" 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 . 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 producer Phil Spector, and orchestrated the ambitious Wall of Sound for the song "River Deep, Mountain High" by Ike and Tina Turner.
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