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Edwin Astley, 1922-1998
Composer, arranger and conductor Edwin “Ted” Astley died in Goring, Oxfordshire, England, on May 19, 1998, at the age of 76, following several years of declining health.
One of the defining musical voices of British adventure television during the 1950s and 1960s, Astley created memorable themes and incidental scores for Danger Man, The Saint, The Baron, Department S and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), while also writing for cinema and documentary television.
Edwin Thomas Astley was born in Warrington, Cheshire, on April 12, 1922. He left school at 14 and initially worked for a gas-oven manufacturer, but music quickly became his profession. During World War II he joined the Royal Army Service Corps band, playing clarinet and saxophone and arranging military and dance-band music. After the war he led the Ted Astley Orchestra before moving to London, where he became an arranger for singers including Vera Lynn and Anne Shelton.
Astley began composing for film and television in the mid-1950s. His early television work included The Adventures of Robin Hood, for which he supplied incidental music and a memorable brass fanfare, followed by The Buccaneers and International Detective. His film assignments included the science-fiction monster film The Giant Behemoth (1959), Peter Sellers’s comedy The Mouse That Roared (1959), The Day They Robbed the Bank of England (1960) and Hammer’s The Phantom of the Opera (1962), for which he composed both the dramatic score and original operatic material. Read more…
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