[2] However, at the outbreak of war and with the end of his scholarship he was put into trade, and embarked on a seven-year toolmaking apprenticeship, much of it at the Siemens Brothers factory in Charlton.
After leaving the Malcolm Mitchell Trio, Pearson turned his talents to British radio, as well as performing in the Peter York Concert Orchestra.
In early 1964, Johnny Pearson took part in helping launch the career of Cilla Black, a rising singer who had been spotted by The Beatles' produced George Martin.
Early in 1964, "Anyone Who Had a Heart" was recorded by Cilla Black at London's Abbey Road Studios, in an arrangement by Pearson which featured the use of bassoons.
The Dionne Warwick version was also in the UK charts at the time (although it only managed to peak at Number 42), but Cilla Black's treatment used slightly different lyrics and a different arrangement.
Initially paid a session fee to record "Cast Your Fate to the Wind", Pearson was subsequently made a full partner in the Sounds Orchestral project.
Pearson first appeared on the BBC music show Top of the Pops in January 1965 playing piano with Sounds Orchestral on "Cast Your Fate to the Wind", which charted at the time.
[10] The following year in 1966, Pearson took charge of the Top of the Pops Orchestra, established after the Musicians' Union forbade miming on televised musical performances.
[11][3] By the summer of 1980, the Musicians' Union went on strike after budget cuts led to the BBC terminating several orchestras, including that of Top of the Pops.
This track, originally titled "Autumn Reverie", first appeared on the 1968 KPM album Gentle Sounds, and was retitled "Heather" by producer John Bettis in the Carpenters' version.
Richard Carpenter apparently first heard the track as background music for a commercial for the US health food supplement maker Geritol, and loved it straight away.
[18] "Autumn Reverie" would also feature again on the 1974 Johnny Pearson LP Touch Me in the Morning, and as background music on the British television series All Creatures Great and Small (1978–90).
As leader of the Johnny Pearson Orchestra he reached number 8 in the United Kingdom chart in early 1972 with "Sleepy Shores", the theme from the television series Owen, M.D.
At the time these projects included working on albums with John Schroeder for Sounds Orchestral and also providing library music to Britain's KPM Records.
This time he teamed up with music executive Larry Page, who wanted to move his label Penny Farthing into the easy listening genre.
Examples of his work included The Rat Catchers, All Creatures Great and Small, General Hospital, Captain Pugwash, Triangle, 3-2-1, Mary Mungo & Midge and ITN's News at Ten (the last of which formed part of "The Awakening", a piece otherwise known to American audiences as the main title theme to the 1974 animated film Journey Back to Oz).
He also wrote the scores to Michael Winner's swinging 60s comedy film The Jokers (1967), the Robert Horton TV spy movies The Spy Killer (1969) and Foreign Exchange (1970), the Grampian Television start-up music "Sounds On", and the ATV startup theme "Midlands Montage", as well as music used during intervals between schools programmes on ITV.
In the United States, Pearson's best-known composition is "Heavy Action", originally used as the theme to the BBC sports show Superstars, and subsequently adopted by ABC's Monday Night Football (the NFL's weekly nationally televised showcase) and the SFM Holiday Network.
Pearson's piece "Graveyard" was used in The Ren and Stimpy Show and SpongeBob SquarePants, and his piece "Mini Walking" was used on Sesame Street as the score for the animated story segment Nancy the Nannygoat by Tee Collins and part of the score for Bill Cosby's Aesop's Fables animated special from Filmation.
Also during late 2011, another Johnny Pearson track, And a Very Good Morning to You, from 1970, was used as a piece of background music, on the Nine Network series, Underbelly.
In the 1970s, Johnny Pearson composed the music score for the Dutch TV series Sil de Strandjutter, performed by his orchestra.
Pearson's composition "Heather", as performed by the Carpenters, has served as the background music to the "Plaat & zijn Verhaal"-section ("A record and its story") at Radio Veronica, in which a song's lyrics are translated into Dutch and read by the DJ.
In 1996, Johnny Pearson recorded a CD of library music, for the radio and television industry, titled Simply Piano.