Richard O. Spencer, known professionally as Dick Spencer, was a Los Angeles-based alto saxophonist whose career sat at the intersection of West Coast jazz and the city's studio recording economy. No birth or death date, hometown, or formal biography for him turns up in Wikipedia, AllMusic, or any other secondary source consulted for this profile; what can be documented comes almost entirely from session credits on Discogs (artist ID 388159, realname Richard O. Spencer, also credited as "Richard 'Dick' Spencer" and "Richard Spencer"), cross-checked against session-by-session discographies where they exist. His earliest identified recording credit is Havin' a Ball (1958, EmArcy), a West Coast session led collectively by trumpeter Harry Edison, trombonist Frank Rosolino, and tenor saxophonists Richie Kamuca and Bill Holman's circle, placing him in the Los Angeles jazz scene by the late 1950s.

Through the 1960s Spencer worked steadily as a session saxophonist, including on Marvin Stamm's Machinations (1968), Don Sebesky's The Distant Galaxy (1968), and Motown's Ridin' High (1968) by Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, alongside jazz work overseas with German pianist Eugen Cicero's quintet (Bach - As Never Played Before, 1966) and, per Discogs, British baritone saxophonist Ronnie Ross's band. From 1973 to at least 1980, Spencer held a chair in the reed section of the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band, the Los Angeles orchestra Akiyoshi formed with her husband, tenor saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin. He is confirmed on alto saxophone (doubling flute and clarinet) across the band's core RCA run: Kogun (1974), Long Yellow Road (1975), Tales of a Courtesan (Oirantan) (1975), Road Time (1976), Insights (1976), March of the Tadpoles (1977), Live at Newport '77 (1977), Salted Gingko Nuts (1979), Sumi-E (1979), and Live at Newport II (1980, drawn from the same 1977 Newport concert) - a run that covers every Grammy-nominated album the Akiyoshi-Tabackin band cut in the 1970s. He shared the alto chair on most of these dates with fellow reedman Gary Foster, who has his own separate JazzProfiles.com profile.

Also in 1977, Toshiko Akiyoshi produced Stepping Out (Discomate, Japan), a studio septet album billed collectively to seven of the band's West Coast players - trumpeter Steve Huffsteter, tenor saxophonist Tom Peterson, drummer Peter Donald, trombonist Bill Reichenbach, bassist Don Baldwin, baritone saxophonist Bill Perkins, and Spencer himself, who solos on alto and soprano on "Blues and Other Colors" and "Lady of De-Lite." The following year Spencer led his own date, Shining Hour (1978, Discomate DSP-5012), a quintet session cut in Los Angeles with pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Reggie Johnson, drummer Billy Higgins, and, per the release credits, trumpeter Conte Candoli - produced by Lew Tabackin. It is Spencer's only known outing as a leader.

Spencer's discography also shows credits with Harry James's orchestra (Discogs lists him under both "Harry James And His Orchestra" and "Harry James & His Music Makers," including the live album Harry James Live, 1981) and with drummer Louie Bellson's big band, appearing on Louie Rides Again! (1974), The Louis Bellson Explosion (1975), and Matterhorn (1979, credited to the Louie Bellson Drum Explosion) alongside a West Coast reed section that included Ted Nash, Don Menza, and Peter Christlieb. His studio work extended well beyond jazz: he is credited on Randy Crawford's debut album Everything Must Change (Warner Bros., 1976), Judy Collins's Hard Times for Lovers (1979), and Donna Summer's Live and More (1978), evidence of the same kind of cross-genre Los Angeles studio career that sustained many of his big-band colleagues. Beyond his sideman work, later reissues and compilations built entirely from the 1970s Akiyoshi-Tabackin masters - among them Mosaic Select (2008) and The Best of Toshiko Akiyoshi (2002) - continue to carry his original session credits forward; these are repackagings of the same recordings already listed above; no further biographical detail about him could be confirmed.

Spencer's surviving recorded work places him in the same lyrical, harmonically clean West Coast alto tradition as his Akiyoshi-Tabackin bandmate Gary Foster, though with less critical documentation of his individual style than most of the band's better-known members. On Shining Hour, his one outing as a leader, he splits time between alto and soprano saxophone across a book of hard-bop-adjacent standards and originals (Jackie McLean's "Minor March," Thad Jones's "A Child Is Born," Charlie Parker's "Barbados"), backed by a rhythm section built around Cedar Walton and Billy Higgins - a pairing that suggests a player comfortable in mainstream postbop settings rather than the more exploratory writing Akiyoshi brought to the big band book. His long run as a first-call Los Angeles studio saxophonist, spanning jazz, Motown pop, film-adjacent orchestral work, and vocal-pop sessions, points to a versatile, reliable section player whose reputation rested more on consistency across settings than on a widely noted individual voice.