Eric Jupp

Eric Jupp (7 January 1922 – 2 January 2003) was a British-born musician, composer, arranger and conductor who gained wide popularity in Australia after settling there in the 1960s, hosting a long-running light music TV show and composing for film and TV. He is best remembered for his theme music to the TV series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

Biography

Jupp was born in Brighton in 1922 and began to study piano at seven. He left school and started his musical career at fourteen, playing in nightclubs. He joined the R.A.F. at the outbreak of World War II. When the war ended, he went to London, where he soon became a prominent member of several leading big bands, working as a pianist, composer and arranger.

Jupp worked as an arranger for both of Britain's top bandleaders of the period, Stanley Black and Ted Heath. Heath's all-star staff of arrangers included Jupp, John Dankworth, George Shearing and Wally Stott (later the musical director of The Goon Show). As pianist and arranger Jupp was also a long-serving member of the Oscar Rabin Band, one of Britain's most popular dance orchestras of that period.