Phil Spector, Famed Music Producer and Convicted Murderer, Dies at 81 (original) (raw)

Music|Phil Spector, Famed Music Producer and Convicted Murderer, Dies at 81

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/arts/music/phil-spector-dead.html

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Known for creating the ‘Wall of Sound,’ he scored hits with the Crystals, the Ronettes and the Righteous Brothers and was one of the most influential figures in popular music.

Since 2009, Phil Spector had been serving a prison sentence for the murder of Lana Clarkson, a nightclub hostess he took home after a night of drinking in 2003.Credit...Pool Photo Al Seib/Getty Images

Published Jan. 17, 2021Updated Jan. 22, 2021

Phil Spector, one of the most influential and successful record producers in rock ’n’ roll, who generated a string of hits in the early 1960s defined by the lavish instrumental treatment known as the wall of sound, but who was sentenced to prison for the murder of a woman at his home, died on Saturday. He was 81.

The cause was complications of Covid-19, his daughter, Nicole Audrey Spector, said. He was taken to San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp, Calif., on Dec. 31 and intubated in January, she said.

Mr. Spector had been serving a prison sentence since 2009 for the murder of Lana Clarkson, a nightclub hostess whom he had taken to his home after a night of drinking in 2003. The Los Angeles police found her slumped in a chair in the foyer, dead from a single bullet wound to the head.

Mr. Spector scored his first No. 1 hit when he was still in his teens. With the Teddy Bears, a group he formed with two school friends, he recorded the dreamy ballad “To Know Him Is to Love Him.” Released in August 1958, it sold more than a million records after the group appeared on the popular TV show “American Bandstand,” with Mr. Spector playing guitar and singing backup.

After learning the ropes as a record producer, Mr. Spector, the central figure in Tom Wolfe’s 1965 essay “The First Tycoon of Teen,” became a one-man hit factory. Between 1960 and 1965 he placed 24 records in the Top 40, many of them classics.

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