Jerry Lordan got to know them and he said 'Look, I've written this and Bert Weedon's going to do it'. As a teenager, he was the leader of such groups as the Blue Cumberland Rhythm Boys and Bert Weedon and His Harlem Hotshots. In this revealing discussion, Weedon talks about the origins of his guitar playing, working with a variety of musical greats and, of course, his much-loved book Play In A Day. Now, again, I'd never heard the word philosophy but it's something that intensely interested me, has done ever since.

For example, Winifred Atwell would want a honky-tonk approach, Russ Conway something light, while Frankie Vaughan would want something quite beaty and Ronnie Hilton something else again. I also worked with Stephan Grappelli for several years at Hatchetts Restaurant when he and Django Reinhardt, who was my hero, parted. In 1976 he became the first solo guitar player to top the Official Top 40 album charts with 22 Golden Guitar Greats.

His playing style focused on both rhythm and melody, and was influenced by the jazz guitarists of the 1950s, notably Les Paul. In the 1930s and 1940s the guitar was not the ubiquitous instrument it would later become and, Weedon said: "The only time you saw a guitar was in the hands of a cowboy in a western singing Home on the Range. When Weedon invited anyone needing help to play the guitar to drop him a line, sackfuls of mail arrived at Associated Rediffusion, who had to print and mail out thousands of instructional leaflets. In the 1950s, Weedon played on hundreds of recording sessions for most of the leading singers and bands of the era, including Alma Cogan, Dickie Valentine and Frankie Vaughan.

Weedon was one of the few experienced studio session players who wholeheartedly embraced rock, which he first heard when Stapleton procured a copy of Haley's Rock Around the Clock months before it was issued in Britain.Just to pluck a few names out of the air – Brian May, Keith Richards, George Harrison and Eric Clapton. In his teens during the 1930s, he led groups such as the Blue Cumberland Rhythm Boys, and Bert Weedon and His Harlem Hotshots, before making his first solo appearance at East Ham Town Hall in 1939. We are approaching the anniversary of his death (April 20, 2012) and I have a horrible feeling that we didn’t make enough of Weedon while we still had him. Beginning with Tommy Steele's 1956 debut Rock With the Caveman, he contributed guitar solos to numerous tracks by Marty Wilde, Adam Faith, Laurie London and others. We rehearsed the music because we wanted to show him that the British musicians were equally as good, if not better, than the American ones.