R.I.P. Johnny Keating

[Reza]

Johnny Keating, composer - obituary

Arranger of the hit Z Cars theme who worked with Ted Heath and his band

6:40PM BST 04 Jun 2015 London Telegraph

Johnny Keating, who has died aged 87, was a composer and arranger whose performance of the theme from Z Cars reached No 5 in the British charts in 1962; it was later adopted by supporters of Everton football club and is still heard as the players emerge at Goodison Park.

Best known for his work with the Ted Heath Band, Keating also arranged numbers for Adam Faith (Don’t That Beat All), Petula Clark (Ya Ya) and Sammy Davis Jr (My Kind of Girl). During a spell in Hollywood he wrote the music for Hotel (1967), starring the Australian actor Rod Taylor. The soundtrack to Robbery (1967), Peter Yates’s tale of the Great Train Robbery, was one of his most popular scores, and included numbers such as Diamond Robbery.

More classical compositions included Overture 100 Pipers and Hebridean Impressions, which both received their premieres at the Royal Albert Hall, the latter being recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. A collection of film tracks, including the theme from The Onedin Line, on which he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, spent 13 weeks in the album charts in 1973.

John Keating was born on September 10 1927, near the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, then an impoverished area. He was the eldest of four children of Jock, an Irish bookmaker, and Esther, his Scottish-born wife. His first musical experience was with the piano accordion; by eight he was appearing in public. Later, against his mother’s wishes, he taught himself trombone .

National Service with a military band prevented Keating from joining the Fountainbridge Palais band from Manchester led by Hughie Gibb, father of the Bee Gees, but he later worked with the Tommy Sampson orchestra. This brought him to the attention of Heath, who in March 1952 was looking for a new trombonist. “The musicians were the tops,” Keating told Jazz Professional of Heath’s band. “Some of the key men were simply sensational, the organisation was class, the money was very comfortable, the crowds large and adoring.”

After a year in London he was dropped by Heath (“one of Ted’s idiosyncrasies”), but within months Heath’s musical arranger had had a car accident and Keating was recruited again. He was now making several musical arrangements a week and was on the band’s first US tour in 1956.

In 1959 he returned to Edinburgh to set up the Keating School of Music, one of the first to teach the principles of big band, swing and jazz. Three years later he was back in London, fusing big-band sounds with the swirling world of jazz. By the 1970s he was the in-house arranger for Decca Records.

The music from Hotel returned him to public consciousness in 1998 when Shirley Horn won a Grammy award for I Remember Miles, which contains This Hotel, based on the original soundtrack.

Keating continued to pursue the academic side of his music and in 1999, after almost 20 years in preparation, completed Principles of Songwriting: A Study in Structure and Technique, a reference book for professional songwriters.

He worked best under pressure, at times throwing his scores in the air in despair. A commission to produce a song within two weeks would be neglected until the night before it was due when, as his friend Ron Simmonds recalled: “His apartment would be filled with copyists, writing furiously as he filled the score".

He lived in Notting Hill, in the building where much of Alfie (1966), starring Michael Caine, was filmed. He was a lifelong supporter of Hibernian football club, for whom he produced Sheila Hart’s song Hibernian (Give us a Goal).

Keating’s first song, Emily, was written for his wife Emma (Emily) Roberts, whom he married in the mid-1940s. She died in 1991. He is survived by two sons and a daughter, all of whom are musicians.

Johnny Keating, born September 10 1927, died May 28 2015