John Barry

John Barry is one of the best-known composers of soundtrack music of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, but his career has carried him through a multitude of music genres and styles. He is best-known in film in connection with his work on the James Bond pictures, but Barry is also the holder of five Academy Awards, none of them for the Bond movies. Born Free (for which he won Oscars for Best Score and Best Song), The Lion in Winter, Out of Africa, and Dances With Wolves are hardly unknown films or scores. Additionally, from 1957 until the early '60s as leader of the John Barry Seven, Barry was one of the best-known figures in popular music and early rock & roll in England. Born in York, England, on November 3, 1933, John Barry was the son of a small movie theater chain owner and a former concert pianist. He showed an avid interest in music as a boy and initially studied piano, although he switched to the trumpet in his teens. After spending much of his boyhood steeped in classical music, he discovered jazz -- his idol was Harry James and his favorite music was made by Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, and the Dorsey Brothers.

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