Edward White (composer)
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Edward George White (1910 - 1994) was a British composer of light music.
He was born in London. Though largely self-taught he became a violinist in a trio and in various dance bands, performing also on saxophone and clarinet. He became known as an arranger of music.
After service in the RAF in World War II, he ran a ballroom orchestra at the Grand Spa Hotel in Bristol. The light orchestral pieces that he composed included:
- Runaway Rocking Horse (1946)
- Paris Interlude (1952)
- Puffin' Billy (1952)
- Telegoons (1963)
Puffin' Billy was used as the signature tune for the BBC Light Programme's 'Children's Favourites', a radio request programme, from 1952 to 1966. The original recording is by the 'Melodi Light Orchestra'. It was composed when White saw an old steam locomotive called "Puffing Billy", (not the locomotive in the London Science Museum), while on holiday on the Isle of Wight. It was also used for even longer, 1955-1974, as the theme music to Captain Kangaroo on the CBS TV network in the United States. In 1957 permission was granted for Mary Rodgers to write lyrics to the tune and vocal version was given the title "Captain Kangaroo".
Puffin' Billy has often been used to signify "1950s Middle England", for example, in The Comic Strip's parodies of The Famous Five, in some of the last cigar adverts on British TV in the early 1990s, and in a trailer for a 2004 Channel 4 documentary about anti-asylum-seeker demonstrators in Lee-on-the-Solent).
