Ron Goodwin was born in Plymouth, Devon on 17 February 1925, the son of a policeman. Piano lessons that started at the age of five were continued in north west London where the family moved four years later. While at the local Willesden County School he took up the trumpet, and after transferring to Pinner County School developed his interest in the study of music theory, taking it as one of his matriculation examinations. While still at school he formed his own band - Ron Goodwin and his Woodchoppers - and gained useful practical experience with a series of semi-professional engagements, but, following his mother’s assertion that music was ‘not very respectable’ and that he should get a ‘proper’ job, Ron became a junior clerk in an insurance office. Not for long, however, for using the office phone once too often to fix dates for his band, he was ‘advised’ by his boss to ‘get a job in music’.

This ‘job in music’ was as a copyist with the music publishers Campbell, Connelly & Co. Ltd, which led to the chance of studying arranging with harry Stafford, and in the course, an appointment as arranger with the Parrmor Gold Orchestral Services, where There, Goodwin’s work included arrangements for a weekly BBC Overseas series, Composer Cavalcade, covering composers from Noel Coward to Albert Ketelbey. He also played the trumpet with Harry Gold and His Pieces of Eight, and in his spare time studied conducting privately with Siegfried de Chabot of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.