He attended Bedford Modern School,[1][6] and he went on to win a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music where he studied piano and composition with Norman Demuth.

[4][7] In 1951, during his army service with the Royal Artillery Band, he made his first BBC broadcast as a solo pianist.

After leaving the army, he worked with seaside orchestras, a touring opera company and as a ship's musician, but it was during the 1960s he came to prominence as a pianist, arranger and composer on BBC programmes such as Music in the Air, Melody around the World and Ronnie Barker's Lines From My Grandfather's Forehead.

In later life he lived in East Devon, mainly composing but occasionally appearing in recordings, concerts and broadcasts.

[3] Langford won an Ivor Novello Award for best light music composition for his March from the Colour Suite in 1971.

This contained several compositions of his own, plus cover versions, played entirely on the then new innovation, the ARP synth, of pieces as diverse as "Yellow Submarine", "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", "Cocktails for Two", "Light Cavalry Overture" and Mozart's Symphony No.