- He was born Solomon Schwartz in 1913, son of Spitalfields bootmaker Lewis Schwartz, and his professional surname is a literal translation of the German for black. One of his albums "Mazel Tov! - Jewish Wedding Favorites" credits Stanley Black and His Orchestra on one side and Sol Schwartz and His Orchestra on the other.
- He was on the advisory board of Who's Who In Music, and contributed a huge section on the history of jazz and the dance orchestra for the New Musical Educator.
- Stanley Black is remembered for writing numerous scores for radio, television and cinema, including the theme-tune for The Goon Show.
- In 1965 he won a Gramophone Award for his version of Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol.
- Among Stanley's many honours were an Ivor Novello Award for Summer Holiday (1962), and, in 1987, the gold award of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.
- In 1947, he married the dance-band singer Edna Kaye, with whom he had a son and a daughter.
- In 1994, as he entered his 80s, he starred with Edmundo Ros at the Royal Festival Hall, and shared the stage at the Barbican with Stéphane Grappelli.
- In an era when radio in general, and the BBC Light Programme in particular, was the dominant medium, he provided the sound behind countless hit productions, including Hi Gang, with Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels, Ray's A Laugh, with comedian Ted Ray, and the comedy series Much Binding In The Marsh and The Goon Show.
- His work also became familiar to millions of cinema audiences as a consequence of his theme tune and music library for Pathé News, written in 1960.
- In the 1960s, he wrote and conducted the scores for Cliff Richard's two best known films, The Young Ones and Summer Holiday.
- During his life, he conducted many of Britain's major orchestras, and until the 1990s he was still directing regular broadcast sessions at the BBC studios, despite the onset of deafness in later life.
- He played with Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong in the 1930s, and was associate conductor of the Osaka Symphony Orchestra in 1971.
- After 10 wartime months with the RAF, he returned to music freelancing; in 1942, he was the conductor, pianist and arranger on Anne Shelton's radio series, Introducing Anne, and, in 1944, became the house arranger and conductor at Decca Records, where he worked with Vera Lynn and, two decades later, Caterina Valente and Dickie Henderson.
- In the 1960s and 70s, Stanley returned to his classical roots, issuing albums of works by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Wagner, Khachaturian and Dvorak, recorded by such orchestras as the London Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic and the London Symphony.
- He presented his own shows, in which he displayed a mastery of the Latin- American styles he had first encountered on a 1938 tour of South America with Harry Roy.
- As television expanded, he became music director on a host of programmes, and, after 1955, he was a pioneer writer of television advertising jingles.
- From 1944 to 1952, Stanley was conductor of the BBC Dance Orchestra, during which time he made more than 4,000 broadcasts.
- In 1995, he was a guest performer at the Royal Albert Hall concert to celebrate the 50th anniversary of VE Day.
- He was made a life fellow of the Institute of Arts and Letters, and life president of the Celebrities Guild of Great Britain.
- In 1977, he became the first non-American to conduct the Boston Pops Orchestra, and was associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic in 1967, and principal conductor of the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra in 1968-69.
- He was made an OBE in 1986.
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