Steve Benbow was a mainstay of the English folk scene for half a century. A fine performer who recorded more than two dozen LPs and was once dubbed “Britain’s first folk guitarist”, he also collected songs, ran clubs, encouraged younger artists and generally proselytised for the music he loved, in the firm belief that maintaining the folk tradition was always more important than personal ambition. With performances on television and radio in the late 1950s and 1960s, he was a seminal influence on a whole generation of folk guitarists.

Born Stephen George Benbow in Tooting, London, in 1931, his family soon moved to Hooley, Surrey, where he remembered milking his first cow at the age of 5. At Reigate Grammar School he showed an aptitude for languages, speaking French and German. He also learnt Arabic from his father who had spent time in Egypt in the Camel Corps.

However, when he left school in 1947, he took a job as a farmhand in Axminster, Devon. In 1950 he was called up to the Army and joined the Royal Veterinary Corps, serving as a mule breaker and dog handler in Egypt, where his language skills were also put to good use.

It was while stationed in the Middle East that he bought his first guitar and he was soon entertaining the troops, performing songs by the likes of country star Jimmie Rodgers and American folk singer Burl Ives on forces radio and reportedly singing in eight different languages.

On his return to Britain in 1955, he went back to farming, but realised swiftly that he could make more money playing in pubs a few times a week, with the additional advantage that a musical life did not require him to rise before dawn. He landed a gig playing trad jazz with Dave Kier’s Jazz Band but also began accompanying the leading singers of the English folk revival that was under way at the time, such as Ewan McColl and A. L. Lloyd, both on their recordings and in concert.

By 1957 he had launched his own solo recording career with EMI, beginning with Steve Benbow Sings English Folk Songs and a companion volume called Steve Benbow Sings American Folk Songs.

Over the next 20 years he recorded around two dozen albums, one of which was produced by EMI staff man George Martin, shortly before he began working with an unknown group from Liverpool called the Beatles. Sometimes nicknamed “Tiger”, he was mostly a solo artist but for a time had a group called the Steve Benbow Folk Four, which included Jimmy McGregor and appeared with the Sonny Stewart Skiffle Kings, Chas McDevitt’s Skiffle Group and the Brady Boys among others.

He also became a regular broadcaster, appearing on the 1950s television shows Guitar Club, The Saturday Skiffle Club and Easy Beat. In the early 1960s he hosted a weekly folk slot called Have Guitar Will Travel on Radio Luxembourg, the only folk singer to appear on the pop station. Yet although his love of folk music was profound he was no purist, as he made clear in a sometimes iconoclastic weekly column he wrote in Melody Maker.

He was also well known in country and western circles and his gigs were famous for his witty repartee, which may have accounted for how he came to work with Spike Milligan on a 1963 stage show in the West End of London, which also led to them collaborating on the television series Muses with Milligan. Always ready to encourage other artists, he also produced recordings for the likes of Dominic Behan and Christy Moore.

By the late 1970s he had stopped recording and resumed his interest in animal husbandry, keeping goats, chickens, donkeys and even a pony and trap. But he returned to recording in 2003 with Don’t Monkey with My Gun, his first album in 25 years, and continued performing in local folk clubs in West London until a week before his death.

He is survived by his wife, Sandie.

Steve Benbow, guitarist, was born on November 29, 1931. He died on November 17, 2006, aged 74