Old Ned - Music by Ron Grainer Arr. Gerry McColl

Old Ned - Theme tune for the BBC Sit-Com "Steptoe And Son" was composed by Ron Grainer and this particular arrangment for Dance Orchestra in 2013 was by Gerry McColl. The orchestra has had hours of fun playing this one.

Ronald Erle Grainer (1922 – 1981) was an Australian composer who worked for most of his professional career in the United Kingdom. He is mostly remembered for his television and film score music, especially the theme music for Doctor Who, The Prisoner, Steptoe and Son and Tales of the Unexpected.

In 1960 Grainer achieved public recognition with his theme and incidental music for the TV series Maigret. When Maigret was given the Ivor Novello "Outstanding Composition for Film, TV or Radio" award in 1961, commissions from a wide range of genres poured in: Goon Show silliness (It's a Square World, 1961), one-off pilots (Comedy Playhouse), documentaries (Terminus, 1961), kitchen sink drama (A Kind of Loving), quirky domestic sitcoms (Steptoe and Son 1962), classic serials (Oliver Twist 1962), teen films (Some People 1962), late night satire (That Was The Week That Was, 1962), outpost angst (Station Six Sahara, 1962), ballet (The King's Breakfast, 1963), science fiction (Doctor Who, 1963), psycho killers (Night Must Fall, 1964), children's adventure stories (The Moon Spinners, 1964), patriotic biography (The Finest Hours, 1964), big-budget musicals (Robert and Elizabeth, 1964), unusual love stories (Boy Meets Girl, 1967), acclaimed dramas To Sir, with Love (1967), allegorical social commentary (The Prisoner, 1967) and crime-caper movies (Only When I Larf, 1968).

Grainer had one notable incidental music score and two TV signature tunes debut the year of his sudden illness and death from cancer. "All Things Bright And Beautiful" influenced ambient music for "The Sound Machine" episode of Tales of the Unexpected, accompanied a central character obsessed with "Sounds I long to hear – Songs beyond the planets".

The last of Grainer's TV themes, It Takes A Worried Man, was broadcast on 21 October 1981, and featured a closing credits film clip of the series hero gradually losing pieces of his torso and face until all that is left are his eyes.
Grainer died from a spinal tumour on 21 February 1981, aged 58.

Steptoe and Son is a British sitcom written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson about a father-and-son rag-and-bone business in 26a Oil Drum Lane, a fictional street in Shepherd's Bush, London. Four series were broadcast by the BBC in black and white from 1962 to 1965, followed by a second run from 1970 to 1974 in colour. The lead roles were played by Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett. The theme tune, "Old Ned", was composed by Ron Grainer.
(ex WIKI)

Gerry McColl (1937 – 2017) - arranger, was born in Glasgow in 1937. He was in the RAF, as a conscript, from ’55 to ’57, and learned Trombone in a station (voluntary) band. After demob, the music bug got him and he joined an Army band in 1959, as a trombonist/guitarist. In 1989 he left the Army as Director of Music of the Band of the Lifeguards, in the rank of Major. Gerry arranged many great orchestrations for the Footloose Dance Orchestra, and also Hale Light Orchestra in his retirement, for which we are eternally grateful.