Denny Wright

Wright married Barbara, a lyricist and actress, in 1961. Their son, St. John, was born while Wright was on stage in Leeds with Donegan in 1963. Barbara died on 16 February 1989 after an eight-year battle with breast cancer. They were married for 27 years. Wright died on 8 February 1992 in London after a nine-year battle with bladder cancer.

A session musician for many years, Wright frequently acted as arranger and "fixer" for recording sessions. He was a prolific jazz and orchestra composer. He led many bands, from small ensembles to night club bands to orchestras. He worked with Latin American and Jamaican bands, including Kenny Graham's Afro-Cubists and Mike McKenzie (jazz musician)'s Quartet. He played with the Carl Barriteau orchestra, the Decca Records house band under Phil Green, and occasionally the Glenn Miller band. Wright was voted the 1980 BBC Jazz Society Musician of the Year.

In 1980, Wright was voted BBC Jazz Society Musician of the Year.

In 1978, he formed the band Velvet with Ike Isaacs, Len Skeat, and Digby Fairweather. After Velvet, he formed a band with Don Harper before reforming the Hot Club of London with Johnny Van Derrick (violin), Gerry Higgins (double bass), and his protégé Robert Seaman (guitar). Wright played with the Hot Club of London across the UK, as well as at jazz festivals in Eindhoven, London, and Cork. His last performance was at The Grapes in Shepherd Market, Mayfair in late 1991 with van Derrick.

In the 1960s, in addition to session for Mary Hopkin and Jones, he and Keith Cooper produced Tribute to the Hot Club as The Cooper-Wright Quintet. Wright also worked extensively with folk singer Steve Benbow and the record company Rediffusion. During the 1970s, he and record producer Anton Kwiatkowski worked on albums for EMI's Music for Pleasure label. He accompanied Grappelli at the Cambridge Folk Festival and for some years after.

The Denny Wright Trio with violinist Bob Clarke took skiffle and jazz to the Soviet Union in 1957 for the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students. From 1940 until the early 1980s, Wright worked as a session musician, playing guitar for Mary Hopkin, Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones. His improvisational style came to the forefront in his work with Donegan. Drawing on jazz, blues, and Django Reinhardt, Wright played acoustic archtop and electric guitar.

Throughout the 1950s Wright provided guitar accompaniments for Lonnie Donegan, Johnny Duncan, Humphrey Lyttelton, and Marie Bryant, as well as appearing on Guitar Club on the BBC. In 1952, he accompanied Tex Ritter for a season at the Texas Western Spectacle at the Haringey Arena. With Digby Fairweather, Roy Williams, Johnny Van Derrick, Jack Fallon, Tony Crombie, and Jack Fallon, Wright accompanied Joel David on Old Bones and added a guitar solo to Joel David's song "Be My Valentine Tonight".

In 1945 he started the first bebop club in London. At the Fullado in New Compton Street he played piano and guitar. In the late 1940s he toured Italy and the Middle East with the Francisco Cavez orchestra and performed in King Farouk's palace.

Wright spent the first part of World War II playing in jazz clubs in the West End of London, doing session work and performing in bands on radio shows. He worked with Grappelli for the first time in London around 1941. At school Wright served with the Auxiliary Fire Service in Brockley. He was classified medically unfit to serve due to a childhood injury in a road accident in 1930 that cost him his spleen and half of his liver. He joined Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), entertained the troops, and at the end of the war was stationed in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands.

Denys Justin Wright (6 May 1924 – 8 February 1992), known professionally as Denny Wright, was a British jazz guitarist.

Wright was born in Deptford, London, and grew up in Brockley with frequent forays to the Old Kent Road and the Elephant and Castle. His father was Joseph William Wright, a wireless telegraphist for the General Post Office who served with the Royal Engineers in World War I. His mother was Selina Elizabeth Stewart, who was born in Hampstead. Wright's paternal family came from Polstead and Boxstead in Suffolk, although they moved to Deptford by 1881. Wright's first instrument was the piano. His older brother, Alex Wright, was a semi-professional guitarist before the war and Denny Wright, ten years younger, was soon trying to play his brother's guitar. He began playing professionally before World War II while at school. He nearly always used his thumb on the top E string and could only play as fast as he could sing. He often sang along as he played a solo, as on Donegan's No 4 UK hit "Don't You Rock Me Daddy-O" recorded in 1957.