David Sinclair Whitaker (6 January 1931 – 11 January 2012) was an English composer, songwriter, arranger, and conductor who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s.

Musical works

Whitaker, who was born in Kingston upon Thames, collaborated with many prestigious British and French artists including Air, Etienne Daho, Marianne Faithfull, Claude François, Serge Gainsbourg, France Gall, Johnny Hallyday, The Rolling Stones, Jimmy Page (for the soundtrack to Death Wish II), Saint Etienne, Simply Red and Sylvie Vartan, and other international artists including Lee Hazlewood, Kings of Convenience and Francesco De Gregori. Arguably Whitaker's best known work from his 1960s career as a session arranger and orchestrator is his distinctive arrangement for the 1966 version of The Rolling Stones' "The Last Time", written for the instrumental album The Rolling Stones Songbook, and credited to a session group dubbed The Andrew Oldham Orchestra. The track might have remained an obscure footnote to the Stones oeuvre, but in 1997 a major controversy erupted surrounding the use of samples from that version of "The Last Time" in the song "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by UK band "The Verve", which drew international attention. In the resulting dispute, Verve frontman and songwriter Richard Ashcroft was forced to surrender the copyright to and all earnings from "Bitter Sweet Symphony" to the American company ABKCO, controlled by former Stones manager Allen Klein, and it would be another twenty years before Ashcroft's management was able to negotiate a settlement with ABKCO, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, which saw the rights finally revert back to Ashcroft. In the meantime, it was estimated that The Verve track had earned US$5 million in publishing revenue alone, and Ashcroft publicly claimed that surrendering his song had cost him $50 million. Whitaker recorded several sessions with the BBC Radio Orchestra at the Maida Vale Studios, London, in the early 1980s, featuring a mixture of his own compositions and arrangements, to high acclaim. In 1992, David Whitaker (along with Adrian Burch), arranged and produced a recording of the Buddy Holly hit "Heartbeat" with vocals performed by actor/singer Nick Berry. It was to be used as the title theme for popular ITV drama series Heartbeat, which also starred Berry. The single was released in 1992 and reached number 2 on the U.K. chart. It was used on every episode of the series until its cancellation in 2010. David and Adrian also composed incidental music for many episodes, although with an increase in the number of episodes produced per year and the reduction in production time per episode, episodes later began to be heavily scored with sections of 1960s pop songs. Alongside his other collaborations, David Whitaker recorded many interpretations of songs for albums released by Reader's Digest. They were usually credited to David Whitaker And His Orchestra. Work with Shel Talmy Shel Talmy was a major record producer with whom Whitaker collaborated. Talmy used Whitaker as arranger and orchestra leader extensively on his sessions from 1965 through to the 1970s, which included singles released on Talmy's Planet label. Talmy produced Music To Spy By, the 1966 David Whitaker Orchestra album for CBS, composed of Whitaker originals. He also produced the albums And A Touch Of Love by Bill Davies, and The Revolutionary Piano of Nicky Hopkins, for which Whitaker did the arrangements. Whitaker was also the arranger on the Talmy-produced fortieth birthday by Lee Hazlewood, Forty. Talmy was also involved with several of the film soundtracks that Whitaker composed, and was the musical director on the film, Scream And Scream Again, starring Vincent Price and Christopher Lee.

Selected film scores

Discography

Compilation

Awards

Death

Whitaker died on 11 January 2012.