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