John Keating, born on 10 September 1927 in Edinburgh, Scotland, was a musician, songwriter, arranger, and trombonist. He studied piano and trombone before teaching himself composition and arrangement during his teenage years. In 1952, he joined British big band leader Ted Heath as a trombonist but soon became his go-to arranger. His breakthrough came in the early 1960s when he collaborated with songwriter Johnny Worth to engineer the career of British pop star Eden Kane, producing a series of top 10 hits between 1961 and 1963. John Keating arranged and conducted albums for London Records' Phase 4 series, which featured innovative synthesizer technology like the Moog synthesizer and EMS VCS 3. Notable solo releases include Temptation (1963) and Swing Revisited (1963). He also composed scores for films such as Hotel (1967) and Robbery (1967), and his "Theme from Z-Cars" became a number eight hit in the 1962 UK Singles Chart, adopted by Everton F.C. as their theme song. His work saw a resurgence during the lounge music revival of the mid-1990s. He founded the Johnny Keating School of Music in Edinburgh and authored Principles of Songwriting: A Study in Structure and Technique, completed in 1999. John Keating passed away on 28 May 2015, at the age of 87.
