Deaths on May 21

Bob Thompson, American pianist and composer (b. 1924)

Robert Lamar Thompson (August 24, 1924 – May 21, 2013) was a composer, arranger, and orchestra leader from the 1950s through the 1980s. Active in Los Angeles, Thompson was a recording artist for RCA Victor and Dot Records, scored film and television soundtracks, and wrote musical accompaniments for commercials. He composed, arranged, and conducted orchestra for such artists as Rosemary Clooney, Mae West, Julie London, Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters, Duane Eddy, Judy Garland, Jerry Lewis, and Phil Ochs.In an interview, Van Dyke Parks, who hired Thompson to arrange "Canon in D" for his 1976 album Clang of the Yankee Reaper, said: "In terms of raw invention, I place Bob in the pantheon of Spike Jones, Les Paul, and Juan García Esquivel. Like Beethoven, they were 'populists' in good heart. They meant to appeal to the masses, and did so, by enlightening them."Thompson is considered a prime exponent of what has belatedly been termed "Space Age Pop," or "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music." This style of breezy, experimental orchestral music became popular in the 1950s and 1960s following the introduction of the long-playing microgroove record and the advent of high-fidelity and stereo home audio systems, which allowed enhanced sonic reproduction. In Thompson's 2013 L.A. Times obit, Koop Kooper, creator of the “Cocktail Nation” podcast and radio show, called Thompson "a seminal figure, a major inventor of this kind of music."