John Barry RIP

John Barry was always one of my heroes, so it was a sad day today when I heard he had died. He first rose to fame when his band, the John Barry Seven provided the sole instrumental spot on our favourite TV programme "The Six Five Special" in the late fifties. Unfortunately the clip on YouTube features John singing, we now know why he stuck to composing. When the BBC commissioned "Juke Box Jury", he wrote the theme music "Hit & Miss". It was good to hear it again on YouTube after all these years.

In 1962 he gained international fame when he composed the music for the first James Bond film "Dr No" and the rest is history. Apart from scoring eleven of the next fourteen Bond movies, his compositions for numerous films (it lists 86 on Wikipedia) earned him five Oscars and another two nominations. But the highlight for me was when he was the night he was awarded the BAFTA fellowship in 2005. For me, that was a highly deserved and emotional event.