Malcolm Lockyer

Malcolm Neville Lockyer entered the world on 5 October 1923 in Greenwich, London, England, and departed on 28 June 1976. Although he trained formally as an architect, his passion for dance music had already taken root by age twelve, prompting semi-professional engagements that continued until military service intervened. At nineteen he was conscripted into the Royal Air Force as a musician, where he performed with Sid Phillips And His Quintet before joining the Buddy Featherstonhaugh Sextet in 1944 and cutting sides for Radion and HMV Records. Once discharged, he took piano chairs alongside Ambrose, Cyril Stapleton and Robert Farnon. His BBC affiliation began in 1945 and eventually encompassed nearly six thousand broadcasts across the decades. In 1951 he established his own orchestra and, writing frequently under the name Howard Shaw, supplied numerous compositions, the most prominent being “Friends And Neighbours” for the 1954 BBC television series, together with “Fiddler’s Boogie” and “The Big Guitar” for the 1955 series Stranger Than Fiction. More than thirty feature films received his scores, as did the television programmes The Pursuers and The Pathfinders. In partnership with Reg Owen he produced an array of albums for Top Rank featuring the Knightsbridge Strings and the Cambridge Strings. Harry Rabinowitz’s departure in 1960 elevated Lockyer to conductor of the BBC Revue Orchestra, a post that linked him to such programmes as Mid-day Music Hall, Take It From Here and Beyond Our Ken. Following the 1966 merger of the Revue and Variety orchestras into the Radio Orchestra, he assumed the role of associate conductor. His acquaintance with Glenn Miller’s idiom dated from 1944, when both musicians were stationed in Bedford; the proximity allowed Lockyer to observe firsthand the techniques that produced the band’s signature sound. In the months preceding his death he led the Million Airs Orchestra through twenty-six Glenn Miller Tribute Concerts that met with considerable acclaim.