Frank Cordell

Frank Cordell (1 June 1918 – 6 July 1980) was a British composer, arranger and conductor, who was actively involved with the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He also composed music under the name Frank Meilleur or Meillear (Meillear being his mother’s maiden name).

He was born Frank Cordell in Kingston-upon-Thames. His father was a doctor who served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War. Frank had two sisters. His brother, Sid Cordell, who was a professional musician, composed music for some of the Hammer Horror productions filmed at Pinewood Studios. As a young teenager Frank worked briefly for Homfray & Company in the cotton mills in Halifax and the Midlands for a family relative, before returning to London. By age 14, he was a competent pianist. Cordell entered a city-wide London music contest and won a Melody Maker poll at the age of 17 for the most promising jazz pianist of 1935. This enabled him to secure a job as a sound man in one of the prestigious London Warner Bros. film studios.

When World War II broke out Cordell enlisted in the RAF and trained as a radio navigation operator, flying the Vickers Wellington in RAF Bomber Command. In his time between dangerous flying "ops" Cordell was in constant demand entertaining his squadron with popular piano music in the mess. On completing his 33 ops he was transferred to flying stealth De Havilland Mosquito bombers on the run between Britain and the Middle East. While in RAF Middle East he was later assigned as bandleader with his own group of musicians and a small convoy of lorries to entertain the British troops in the Western Desert Campaign. He was then appointed music director of Forces Radio in Cairo, where he conducted a weekly radio program called Music For Moderns. Among the friends and local Cairo artists he worked with was the singer, Delores El Greco. From there he was assigned to a double role of music entertainment and intelligence work in Palestine. It is in Palestine while music entertaining that he met his first wife Magda, who was a Hungarian refugee working for the British in translating intercepted wireless signals. Magda later became a well known "Brutalist" artist, and along with Cordell was a participant in the This Is Tomorrow Exhibit, and both were founder members of the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

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