Being a Butlins Redcoat in the 1950s was as all round a training in showbusiness as anyone could get. Aiming to entertain audiences that had a broad spectrum of likes and dislikes, keeping an ear open for the latest hits, and being able to turn one’s hand to jazz, skiffle and evergreen ballads were all part of the territory. For Clinton Ford, who worked the summer seasons at Butlins in Pwllheli for three consecutive summers from 1957, it set in motion a career that was notable for his extraordinary versatility.

Initially, Ford became known as a skiffle singer, in the era of Lonnie Donegan, tea-chest basses and washboards. To jazz enthusiasts, Ford was famous as the vocalist with the Merseysippi Jazz Band in Liverpool, then with Kenny Ball’s Jazzmen, and subsequently as a frequent guest artist with a huge range of bands from Charlie Gall and the Clyde Valley Stompers to George Chisholm’s Gentlemen of Jazz. To fans of the BBC Light Programme, he was the host of Clinton’s Cakewalk, and the smooth-toned singer of such music-hall flavoured ditties as Fanlight Fanny. He was also a regular in pantomime and cabaret. His compositions included The Old Bazaar in Cairo, which he co-wrote with the comedian Charlie Chester and which became a firm favourite on Radio 2. His country music song Old Shep, written by Red Foley about the death of a faithful sheepdog, was his biggest-selling record, but he donated the not insubstantial royalties from it to Battersea Dogs’ Home.

Ian George Stopford Harrison was born in Salford in 1931, and grew up in a musical family. During his National Service he began singing folk songs to his own guitar accompaniment, and after he was demobbed in 1957 led his own band, the Backwoods Skiffle Group. He did not think his real name sounded right for this brand of down-home American music so he adopted Clinton Ford as his stage persona. At this time he was making ends meet as a lab assistant, and playing with the group whenever possible, but later in 1957 he landed the Butlins job for the summer season and became a full-time musician. In the winters he sang with the Merseysippi band at what was then a relatively unknown club, the Cavern in Liverpool. He made a considerable impression on the band by turning up for his first session in the dingy basement club wearing dark glasses. This was not, however, an attempt to be super-cool, but to disguise a black eye given to him by another Butlins employee in a contretemps over a lady friend. Lodging in cheap digs on Canning Street, where he wrote his first songs, Ford remembered the Cavern Club of the time as “squalid”. He recounted: “When it was packed the moisture would rise and settle on the ceiling. It would condense and drip down your neck. It was an awful place but we loved it.”

The band liked his versatile voice, and he recorded Alexander’s Ragtime Band with the group under the pseudonym Al St George. The band also played one of his original songs, Now That You’ve Gone, and later he recorded an EP with them under his real name, including the song Get Out and Get Under, which he continued to sing for the rest of his career. After appearing at the Royal Albert Hall and on Ken Dodd’s television show together, the members of the Merseysippi realised that Ford’s days with them were numbered, as he sought the bright lights in London. He briefly led another skiffle group, Hallelujah, but their few records were not a success. However, his own disc of Old Shep was a minor hit, and gradually Ford began to appear on the BBC Light Programme in a number of different guises.

He was a guest on Saturday Club, and at the presenter Brian Matthew’s invitation began singing an “oldie” a week on Easy Beat. Further hit records followed, firstly Too Many Beautiful Girls accompanied by Charlie Galbraith’s jazz band, and then Fanlight Fanny, which Ford revived from a 1939 George Formby movie entitled Trouble Brewing. This was to be his most successful record, and it was his first pairing on disc with the comedian and trombonist George Chisholm. Together they made several more discs, including the ribald My Baby’s Wild about My Old Trombone, which Ford sang with a degree of innuendo to match that of his contemporary, the Liverpudlian jazz singer George Melly.

By 1963 Ford was a regular guest on upwards of half a dozen programmes each week on the Light Programme. An internal investigation alerted most light entertainment producers to this fact, and he was promptly dropped by almost all of them. But by then Ford had spent a year on the road between radio engagements with Kenny Ball, and was now working as a soloist as well as beginning to make his mark on pantomime. He never lost contact with his old jazz colleagues, and made frequent returns to the club circuit and record studios, but now he added such variety artists as Kenny Lynch and Jimmy Tarbuck to his circle of colleagues.

In 1962 he married Maggie Worsford, an ex-Tiller girl, and in due course they set up a guest house in Douglas, Isle of Man. This was only ever a partial success commercially, with the result that Ford continued to tour and record throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In his latter years he was happiest when back with his old friends the Merseysippi Band, trundling through a selection of their favourite songs, or doing cabaret spots that reprised his hits. An evening seldom went by without him once more singing the tale of Old Shep, or of Fanlight Fanny. Ford is survived by his wife and four children.

Clinton Ford, showbusiness performer, was born on November 4, 1931. He died on October 21, 2009, aged 77