Billy Cotton

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Billy Cotton
Billy Cotton in 1928
Background information
Birth name	William Edward Cotton
Born	(1899-05-06)6 May 1899 Smith Square, London, England
Died	25 March 1969(1969-03-25) (aged 69) Wembley, London, England
Genres	Big band
Occupation(s)	Musician, radio personality, singer
Years active	Early 1920s–1969

William Edward Cotton (6 May 1899 – 25 March 1969)^[1] was an English band leader and entertainer, one of the few whose orchestras survived the British dance band era. Cotton is now mainly remembered as a 1950s and 1960s radio and television personality, but his musical career had begun in the 1920s. In his younger years, Billy Cotton was also an amateur footballer for Brentford (and later, for the then Athenian league club Wimbledon), an accomplished racing driver and the owner of a Gipsy Moth, which he piloted himself. His autobiography, I Did It My Way, was published in 1970, a year after his death.