Composers: Cool Hand in Hollywood

"I'm not putting his piano playing down," says Dizzy Gillespie, "but he's a better writer than a pianist." Gillespie was talking about Argentina's Lalo Schifrin, 37, who used to jam with Dizzy's band in Birdland days. Today Schifrin is widely accepted in Hollywood as the most inventive composer of movie scores in the business. Since quitting the Gillespie quintet in 1963 to try his luck with films, he has scored 21 features (Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt), three TV serials (including Mission: Impossible, with its pulsating, wide-open jazz theme) and half a dozen...

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