Alec Andrew Templeton was born in Cardiff, blind from birth but gifted with absolute pitch. His extraordinary musical ear was recognised early, and from the age of nine he studied organ at Worcester College, Oxford, with Ivor Atkins, later training at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He began broadcasting for the BBC as a boy and remained a familiar voice on British radio through the early 1930s.
In 1936 Templeton moved to the United States as a member of Jack Hylton's jazz band and quickly built a career as a wickedly funny musical satirist, sending up classical composers with pieces such as "Bach Goes to Town", "Mozart Matriculates" and "Mendelssohn Mows 'em Down". "Bach Goes to Town" became a jazz standard, famously recorded by Benny Goodman's band in 1938. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1941.
Templeton went on to host his own long-running American radio show, Alec Templeton Time, sponsored by Alka-Seltzer, and later a television series, It's Alec Templeton Time, on the DuMont network in 1955. Through the 1950s he performed jazz and classical repertoire with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He died in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1963, aged 52.