My father, Dan Morgan, died on 4th November 2011, aged 85.

He was a professional musician for most of his life, first in London and later in and around his home town of Spalding, Lincolnshire. When he first started to learn the guitar in the late 1930s and early 1940s it was still an exotic instrument in England, but as American style dance bands became popular during the war years and after, the guitar became more common. In the immediate post-war years, my dad was one of a relatively small number of guitarists capable of playing in Big Bands. In those years, he won a number of Melody Maker awards for his individual virtuosity as well as for the groups in which he played.Throughout his life, he loved nothing more than playing music with his friends in front of an appreciative audience.

In 1965, he combined his interest in writing with his enthusiasm for the guitar, when he published his best selling book 'Guitar'. Unlike all other guides to the guitar, he wrote a proper book, not just a series of chord shapes. He used all his writing skills to communicate to people the joy of music and of the guitar in particular. Probably much to his chagrin, the audience for his book consisted of the fans of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page desperate to become rock guitarists in the 1960s. He hated this sort of music all his life - 'noise' and 'racket' were his usual descriptions. Nevertheless, 'Guitar' was a path breaking book and deservedly sold 300,000 copies.

Dan's great passion was the music of Django Reinhardt. He loved gypsy jazz for its sweet sounds, its rhythms, its combination of collective discipline and individual improvisation. In later years he recorded a number of CDs with friends, mainly drawing on Django's repertoire. On his last day, we played tracks from his album 'Swing Gitan' recorded with Steve Rodda a few years ago to ease him on his way.

Up into his 80s, he would attend the annual Django festival at Samois, driving across in his camper van. He loved the sense of shared passion for music that he saw there and his fondest memories were of seeing and joining in with people from all parts of the world, improvising around gypsy jazz standards.

He loved music and he loved being a musician. It is for this reason I have opened this page.