Nelson Smock Riddle Jr

 Nelson Smock Riddle Jr. (June 1, 1921 – October 6, 1985)

Riddle was an arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s. His work for Capitol Records kept such vocalists as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Johnny Mathis, Rosemary Clooney and Keely Smith household names. He found commercial and critical success again in the 1980s with a trio of Platinum albums with Linda Ronstadt. His orchestrations earned an Academy Award and three Grammy Awards. In 1950, Riddle was hired by composer Les Baxter to write arrangements for a recording session with Nat King Cole; this was one of Riddle's first associations with Capitol Records. Although one of the songs Riddle had arranged, "Mona Lisa," soon became the biggest selling single of Cole's career, the work was credited to Baxter. However, once Cole learned the identity of the arrangement's creator, he sought out Riddle's work for other sessions, and thus began a fruitful partnership that furthered the careers of both men at Capitol. He sold millions of records receiving Grammy Awards for the albums "Cross Country Suite" (1958), "What's New" (1983) and "Lush Life" (1985). For television he wrote the hit theme song for "Route 66", arranged the music for episodes of "Batman" and won an Emmy Award for music director of "The Julie Andrews Hour". He also won a Academy Award for his score of the film "The Great Gatsby" (1974) and received a star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1974.

In 1985, Riddle died in Los Angeles, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, at age 64 of cardiac and kidney failure as a result of cirrhosis of the liver, with which he had been diagnosed five years earlier. He is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.