Harry Edward Nilsson III

 Harry Edward Nilsson III (June 15, 1941 – January 15, 1994)

Nilsson was a singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. His work is characterized by pioneering vocal overdub experiments, returns to the Great American Songbook, and fusions of Caribbean sounds. A tenor with a three-and-a-half octave range, Nilsson was one of the few major pop-rock recording artists of his era to achieve significant commercial success without ever performing major public concerts or undertaking regular tours. Born in Brooklyn, Nilsson moved to Los Angeles as a teenager to escape his family's poor financial situation. While working as a computer programmer at a bank, he grew interested in musical composition and close-harmony singing, and was successful in having some of his songs recorded by various artists such as the Monkees. In 1967, he debuted on RCA Victor with the LP Pandemonium Shadow Show, followed with a variety of releases that include a collaboration with Randy Newman (Nilsson Sings Newman, 1970) and the original children's story The Point! (1971). His most commercially successful albums, Nilsson Schmilsson (1971) and Son of Schmilsson (1972), bore the international top 10 singles "Without You" (1971) and "Coconut" (1972). His only other top 10 hit, "Everybody's Talkin'" (1968), was a prominent song in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. A version of Nilsson's "One", released by Three Dog Night in 1969, also reached the U.S. top 10.

During a 1968 press conference, the Beatles were asked what their favorite American group was and answered "Nilsson". The endorsement boosted his profile, and he soon formed close friendships with the band's John Lennon and Ringo Starr. In response to Lennon's 1980 death by shooting, he took a hiatus from the music industry to campaign for gun control. From then on, he recorded only on sporadic occasions. In 1994, Nilsson died of a heart attack while in the midst of recording new material for a since-unreleased comeback album. He is buried at Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village, California.