Stanley Black: obituary from The Independent

02 December 2002

BBC Dance Orchestra conductor and composer and orchestrator of film scores

Stanley Black, composer and conductor: born London 14 June 1913; OBE 1985; married (one son, one daughter); died 26 November 2002.

"It's all music," said the conductor and arranger Stanley Black when asked to describe his wide interests: I deplore the closed minds and musical bigotry which exist in so many quarters. Only a fool would suggest that there is the same emotional and intellectual depth in a film score by Henry Mancini as there is in a Brahms symphony, but this does not mean that the movie score is valueless and shouldn't be enjoyed at its own level. Why not learn to appreciate and enjoy both? Black was born the son of a shoemaker in London in 1913. He had piano lessons from the age of seven and later studied at the Matthay School of Music, run by the piano duettists Rae Robertson and Ethel Bartlett. (Myra Hess had also been a pupil.) His first composition, when aged 12, was broadcast by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. His first professional engagement was a summer season with a Dixieland jazz band at the Dreamland Ballroom, Margate, in 1929. In the same year, he won an arranging contest sponsored by Melody Maker. He played with various well-known dance bands including Ambrose, Lew Stone and Harry Roy. In 1938 he went to South America with Roy and developed a fascination with Latin American music, making several albums during his career and introducing the music to a wider public. During the Second World War, he served in the RAF, being in charge of entertainment in the Wolverhampton area. Upon his discharge in 1944, he became conductor of the BBC Dance Orchestra, a position he held until 1952. "There were about five to six shows a week," Black told me in 1986, and they varied immensely. We were called the BBC Dance Orchestra, and it wasn't. More often than not, we had 40 or 50 musicians so it was an all-purpose studio orchestra. Some of the things I really enjoyed. I loved the Latin American programmes and we had a very successful series called Top Score. I did the first five series of The Goon Show and the signature tune was mine. That was great fun, as was Much Binding in the Marsh. The BBC Dance Orchestra was featured in a Royal Command Performance in 1951. In all, Black was involved in 3,000 broadcasts and his name became known through such series as Black Magic and The Musical World of Stanley Black. He was also signed to Decca Records and, in addition to his own recordings, he was obliged to accompany several of their performers including David Whitfield, Anne Shelton, Dick James and the Stargazers. 'Do I really have to talk about this?" he asked. It was all right. It was a job of work. I had to stand there and wave a stick for whoever walked on the stand. It was fun and I suppose it was instructive. The industrious Black had a further career in films, whether writing original scores or orchestrations, and for many years was the resident musical director at Associated British Film Studios. What he described as his "long trek" in the film studios began in 1939. His first 10 or 11 films were documentaries, "which people assured me was the best way of learning the craft". His scores include It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), Laughter in Paradise (1951), The Naked Truth (1957), Too Many Crooks (1958), The Battle of the Sexes (1960) and The Long and the Short and the Tall (1960). "I've got a particular soft spot for a film I scored called Hell is a City with Stanley Baker in 1959," Black said: It was a northern story and I was rather pleased at the way it turned out. I find that the public often get the wrong idea about film music. Miklos Rozsa wrote a wonderful score for Ben Hur and people were always complimenting him about his music for the chariot race. There is no music in the chariot race – he decided that the cheering, the chariot wheels and the horses' hooves would be enough. In 1960 Black wrote the signature music and a music library for the Pathé Newsreel. He scored the Cliff Richard films The Young Ones (1961) and Summer Holiday (1962), winning an Ivor Novello Award for his work on the latter: I was responsible for the orchestrations and, as always in a musical, all the numbers are pre-recorded and the artists go through their high jinks and dance to the playback. I loved doing the show sequence in The Young Ones immensely. At first, Black was not impressed by the Beatles: I'm very strictly a middle-of-the-road man. My ideal artists are Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. If I were to pick an all-time favourite record, it would be Sinatra singing "You Make Me Feel So Young". When the Beatles burst upon the scene, I wasn't entirely hooked but then I heard an album of Keely Smith singing the Lennon and McCartney songbook and I realised that they were wonderful songs. The Beatles never grabbed me as performers but they certainly did as songwriters. With advances in recording technology, Black recorded the very popular Film Spectacular series for Decca's Phase 4 label. He created a worldwide interest in scores from the golden age of cinema including The Sea Hawk and Stagecoach: Lots of people were recording "Theme From" albums but I went further and presented the whole story in musical form in 10 minutes. It was like a resumé of the score and I especially liked what we did with Gone with the Wind. In 1977 Black scored the controversial film Valentino, directed by Ken Russell. He made worldwide appearances as a guest conductor and was the first British conductor at the Boston Pops. One of his favourite concert items was taking "Three Blind Mice" and dressing it up in the style of well-known composers. In 1984 he was asked to write a fanfare for a Royal Film Performance and, two years later, he was appointed OBE in the New Year Honours. He was immensely proud of this but perhaps his proudest moment came when meeting Frank Sinatra: When I was in Hollywood, someone invited me to a Frank Sinatra recording session. I leapt at the opportunity but he frowned when he saw me as he didn't care for visitors. I was introduced to him and he said, "I know who you are. I often play your albums in the wee small hours and I think they're great." I was tickled to death.