Miles Goodman on AllMovie

Composer and music producer Miles Goodman scored many films, notably the toe-tapping tunes from Footloose (1984) and Little Shop of Horrors (1986). As a producer, Goodman specialized in light jazz and classics. Los Angeles-born and raised, Goodman majored in theater at Antioch College. It was his cousin Johnny Mandel who led Goodman to a music career. Goodman studied under Albert Harris during the early '70s and cut his composer's teeth as an orchestrator for a few of Mandel's scores, including Being There (1979). He officially launched his career in 1977, scoring the critically acclaimed but short-lived NBC series James at 15. On this program, he created his signature technique of combining songs with original music. By 1991, after over a decade of scoring an average of four major feature films a year, Goodman decided to take a break and so became a record producer. His first production featured harmonicist Toots Thielemans working with a variety of famed Brazilian artists on The Brazil Project (1992). Goodman died at age 47 on August 16, 1996, following a heart attack in his Los Angeles home.