Dick Marx

Richard H. "Dick" Marx (born April 12, 1924 in Chicago , † August 12, 1997 in Highland Park , Illinois) was an American jazz pianist , arranger and composer for film and television.

Life

Dick Marx played the piano as a child and began his professional career in Chicago nightclubs . In the 1950s he accompanied Helen Merrill and put on a number of albums under his own name. In 1957 the album Marx Makes Broadway was created with musicians such as Irving Ashby , Howard Roberts , Carson Smith , Red Mitchell , Frank Capp and Buddy Collette as flautists . From the 1960s on, he mainly worked for the advertising industry and wrote popular advertising jingles in the USA for brands such as The Wrigley Company , Kellogg's and Nestlé . In 1968 he wrote a fight song for the Chicago Blackhawks ice hockey team , "Here Come the Hawks," which is still used today. In 1975, Marx composed the theme song for the Chicago television station WBBM-TV , based on the old folk song “I Love Chicago, Chicago My Home”. The tune was very popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was later adopted by stations owned by CBS Radio .

In 1986 Dick Marx moved to Los Angeles , where he wrote film scores such as A Class of Their Own (1992), Edwards and Hunt, and music for television series such as Fudge . He also worked as an arranger for artists such as Joe Cocker , Yoshiki and his son Richard Marx . He was involved in a traffic accident in Las Vegas in 1997 and died shortly afterwards in Highland Park, Illinois .

Discographic notes

• Too Much Piano ( Brunswick , 1955)
• Dick Marx Piano ( Coral , 1957)
• Marx Makes Broadway (VSOP, 1957)
• Delicate Savagery (Coral, 1958)

Web links

• Dick Marx biography on Allmusic
• Obituary in the New York Times