Lex de Azevedo
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Lex de Azevedo is an American Mormon composer known primarily for his film scores.
He was born in California, the son of Alyce King of The King Sisters by her first marriage. He composed the score for Where the Red Fern Grows, which appeared in 1974. His most ambitious film project was The Swan Princess, which was directed by Richard Rich. This was a full-blown animated musical, with original music and a version of the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 "Pathétique" for the crocodiles-in-the-moat sequence.
Azevedo was musical director for the Jackson Five, The Sonny & Cher Show and the Osmonds.[1]
During the 1960s, De Azevedo produced several middle-of-the-road albums for Capitol Records, including Laurindo Almeida's "Plays for a Man and a Woman" and the Four King Cousins' "Introducing the Four King Cousins."
De Azevedo has also composed extensively for pop singers (including many members of his own family) and the stage. His musical Saturday's Warrior was a great hit in the LDS market.
Easy listening music fans may have heard the more than 200 recordings De Azevedo made for the Bonneville easy listening format music library. His arrangements of (then) popular songs recorded exclusively for radio station airplay made his music very commonly heard on soft sounds music radio stations in the 1970s and 1980s. His music is also heard on XM Radio's Escape channel 78.
De Azevedo's daughter Rachel is the producer of the popular Signing Time! videos, designed to teach children American Sign Language, and Lex appears in them during the grandparents sequence of Vol. 2.
