Former Life Member. Composer
3/4/1932 – 10/7/2025
Studio City, CA resident, Ian Freebairn-Smith, best known for his Grammy-winning arrangement of Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams’ hit song “Evergreen” from “A Star is Born” (1976), passed away on October 7, 2025. He was 93 years old.
In a full-page ad placed in Variety by Paul Williams in 1978, referring to their collaboration on the score for a film called “The End” starring Burt Reynolds, Williams (president of ASCAP) stated, “his ever creative mind made my simple (but haunting) themes sound as if they had been written by an actual grownup.”
One of Freebairn-Smith’s original songs, “The Wailing of the Willow” co-written with the late Harry Nilsson, was on Harry’s biggest-selling album, “Aerial Ballet,” and has been recorded by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Astrud Gilberto, Bobbie Gentry, Liza Minnelli, Percy Faith and Fred Astaire, among others.
In the 1970s and 1980s, he composed scores for TV shows “Cagney and Lacey,” “Magnum, P.I.,” “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” (featuring Peter Horton, Richard Dean Anderson and the late River Phoenix), with a theme by legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb), “Airwolf” and “Fame,” as well as films like 1970 cult classic “The Strawberry Statement” with a soundtrack featuring songs by Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Joni Mitchell, Thunderclap Newman and Freebairn-Smith.
He also scored several TV movies such as “The Curious Case of the Campus Corpse” aka “The Hazing” (1977), “Deadly Lessons” (1983) and “Three On a Match” (1987), to name a few, as well as dozens of well-known jingles for Chevron, Continental Airlines, United Airlines, Dubonnet Wine, and Pacific Bell, among others, his “California Sound” credited with bringing a huge increase of commercial production to Los Angeles.
Freebairn-Smith was already a gifted vocal arranger in his 20s, writing close harmony arrangements of popular songs for groups such as the Hi-Lo’s, and formed his own tight harmony singing group, the Singers Incorporated, with fellow vocalists Perry Botkin Jr., Sue Allen, Jimmy Bryant and George Tipton.
His voice can be heard on numerous records, commercials and film soundtracks including the “Batman,” “Flipper” and “Gilligan’s Island” TV series’ theme songs, and in the bass section on films scores for “Peter Pan” (2003), “The Matrix Revolusions” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (2008). With the Ron Hicklin singers he voiced the main title song for Robert Altman’s film “M*A*S*H,” Johnny Mandel’s “Suicide is Painless,” plus several records for Impulse! Records as part of a group of session singers who went by the name of the California Dreamers. He also provided the singing voice of Ray Walston (“My Favorite Martian”) in the Billy Wilder comedy starring Dean Martin, “Kiss Me Stupid.”
Freebairn-Smith’s arranging work included charts for legends Andy Williams, Barbra Streisand (“A Star is Born”), Stephen Bishop (“Careless”), Jeff Beck, Lou Rawls, Van Dyke Parks, John Klemmer, Anthony Newley, Randy Crawford, folk artists Emitt Rhodes and Phil Ochs (“Pleasures of the Harbor,” “Tape from California”), the Ventures and Lee Hazelwood.
Father, Thomas Freebairn-Smith, an announcer on the CBS evening news, transitioned to directing radio dramas in the 1950s, and along with Walt Disney and Don DeFore, helped form the National TV Academy. Brother, Rod Freebairn-Smith, is a retired San Francisco architect. Wives were, Billie Jean (Mercer) Freebairn-Smith, longtime assistant to the producers on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson and Jay Leno, and violinist Shari Zippert, whose death preceded his by one year.
Ian Freebairn-Smith was born on March 4, 1932, in the Seattle area, his family moving to Los Angeles in 1934. He is survived by his brother Rod, and four daughters, Leslie, Alison, Jenifer and Vanessa, three of whom are musicians, as well as four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
