Denny Wright
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Denny (Denys Justin) Wright (6th May 1924 - 8th February 1992) was a jazz guitarist, born in Deptford, London, England. Denny grew up in Brockley, with frequent forays to the Old Kent Road and the Elephant & Castle.
Denny's first instrument was the piano. His older brother, Alex, was a semi-professional guitarist before the war and it was inevitable that Denny, ten years younger, was soon trying to play his brother's guitar. He must have succeeded, because Denny began playing professionally before World War II, while still at school. For a schoolboy, he was pulling in a substantial income. Indeed, when one teacher took a dislike to him, Denny took his entire class to the cinema and the teacher arrived after lunch to find an empty classroom.
Denny spent the first part of the war playing in jazz clubs in the West End of London, doing almost non-stop session work and performing in bands on many hit wartime shows. He worked with Stephane Grappelli for the first time in London around 1941. Denny was unable to join up, being classified as medically unfit due to a childhood injury which resulted in his spleen and half of his liver being surgically removed. At some point during the war, he worked for the first time with Stephane Grappelli. When he was old enough to join up, Denny joined ENSA, entertained the troops, and ended the war in 's-Hertogenbosch in Holland.
After the war,in 1945, he set up London's first bebop club, the Fullado in Old Compton Street. In the late 1940s he toured Italy and the Middle East with the Francisco Cavez orchestra before ending up playing in King Faroukh's palace. He returned to the United Kingdom. Throughout the 1950s Denny was hard at work providing some of the great guitar accompaniments for Lonnie Donegan, Johnnie Duncan, etc., featuring on BBC's Guitar Club. He was part of Lonnie's group who first took skiffle to the Soviet Union in 1957.
Denny's free-flowing improvisational style came to the forefront through his work with Lonnie Donegan in the 1950's. Denny was a pioneer in establishing a fresh lead guitar style in the context of the folk and blues roots from which donegan drew his song repertoire . Drawing upon and transcending the jazz blues elements in his own background, and the vital influence of Django Reinhardt, Denny produced constantly innovative lead breaks and solos for Donegan's live work and recordings on both acoustic archtop and electric guitar.
From 1940 until the early 80s, Denny was a regular in the recording studios as one of Britain's best session musicians.
Together with Bill Bramwell and Donegan's younger lead guitar players, Les Bennetts and Jimmy Currie, he helped forge an approach to lead styling inspirational for the next generation of British lead guitarists working with blues - based material in a rock context.In the early 70s, Denny once more accompanied Stephane Grapelli, beginning at the famous Cambridge Folk Festival where Stephane's career was relaunched. In 1981, Denny was voted BBC Jazz Society Musician of the Year.
Stephane Grappelli: "Denny Wright also is a marvellous player, he's got such a good technique. Of course he can't produce Django's melodic line because Django invented it, but he has his own style, and on top of that he's got the strength of Django Reinhardt. In my opinion he's the only player in the world who can compare to Django and, you know, when I'm playing with Denny Wright and if I let my spirit go, then maybe I find that for a few seconds I'm back again with Django Reinhardt." (Guitar Magazine, mid 70s)
Paul McCartney: "I remember going to see Lonnie Donegan in 1956 at the Empire in Liverpool. It was wonderful. After we saw him and the skiffle groups, we just wanted guitars. Denny Wright, his guitar player, we really used to love--he was great."(Amazon.com interview)
Denny died in 1992 in London after a nine year battle with cancer. His wife, Barbara, predeceased him by just under three years. He leaves a son.
