Mantovani, who is English in spite of his Italian name, probably owes much of his musical skill to his father who, as a symphony orchestra leader, worked under many world-famous conductors, including Toscanini. He was at one time leader of the Milan Symphony Orchestra. His thirty-two-year-old son has been on the air for many years now. When eighteen years of age he became leader of the Salon Orchestra which played at the Metropole Hotel, London. For six years he gave lunch-time broadcasts with this combination. He left the Metropole to accept an invitation to form his own band for the Monseigneur Restaurant, Piccadilly, and it was thus that Mantovani's Tipica Orchestra came into being.

He so named it because, whether the music it played was Russian, Spanish, Italian, or that of any other nationality, it always sounded typical.