Few drummers crossed the boundaries of jazz and rock so effortlessly as John Guerin. His first significant professional work was a three-year stint with the clarinettist Buddy DeFranco from 1960, and shortly after that he joined George Shearing’s Quintet, then based in Los Angeles. Soon becoming established on the West Coast jazz scene, and a sought-after studio player, Guerin played on dozens of sessions, and became particularly adept at accompanying singers.

During his career he made three albums with Peggy Lee, and others with such luminaries as Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Bobby McFerrin and Dianne Schuur.

He was a reliable and swinging jazz drummer, for groups both large and small, and he worked frequently in the trios and quartets of the pianist Roger Kellaway and the bassist Ray Brown, as well as joining the big band of Thelonious Monk and making a significant contribution to Gerry Mulligan’s Age of Steam album. Yet at the same time he was working on the experimental edge of rock, appearing on Frank Zappa’s late 1960s albums Lumpy Gravy and Hot Rats.

Outside the studios, Guerin played with a variety of groups, but in 1973 he joined the fusion band LA Express, led by the saxophonist Tom Scott. They played each Tuesday at the Baked Potato club in North Hollywood, and it was there that the singer Joni Mitchell heard them and invited them to appear on her disc Court and Spark. It was the beginning of a long association, and Guerin not only co-wrote and played on the title of her Hissing of Summer Lawns, but also featured on Mike Gibbs’s fusion arrangements for her album Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter of 1977. The LA Express toured as her support group in the 1970s.

After that, Guerin continued to play in a variety of styles, backing the singers Linda Ronstadt and John Pizzarelli among others, and also producing and arranging.

Michael Hooker, charitable and educational consultant, was born on January 22, 1923. He died on January 26, 2004, aged 81.

Michael Hooker was the pioneer of professional fundraising in the UK, drawing on the techniques of American consultants for the benefit of good causes, from cathedrals, colleges and schools to medical and welfare charities. As managing director of Hooker, Craigmyle & Co., he helped to raise some £100 million in present values, specialising like a good dentist in “painless extraction” with the help of covenants, deposited covenants, trusts and legacies. Although he built up a secret “VRP list” of very rich people, his skill was in meticulously matching particular appeals to their special interests, and identifying larger numbers of potential donors, including alumni, worshippers, friends and local communities.

He was educated at Marlborough and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and gained his PhD at the University of the Witwatersrand with a thesis on a notable South African bishop. By middle age, he came himself to look something like a bishop of the old school, with a round, balding head, pink cheeks and a striking combination of twinkling benevolence, a mischievous sense of fun and an authoritative, sometimes even stern, aspect.

A bachelor, he cultivated a special gift for friendship, collecting an extremely wide family of godchildren, friends and sometimes their widows and grandchild-ren, for many of whom he kept open house in his sprawling Brighton flat, acquired in 1985 for a retirement that never came. There he hosted memorable dinners which he proudly cooked for gatherings of politicians, academics and patrons of the theatre and other lively causes. (As a former governor of Truman and Knightley Education Trust, he was exceptionally knowledgeable on schools and heads, and free with advice to friends on choice of schools for their children.)

He was himself a generous supporter of charities, including those for Aids, hospices and children, and among many honorific posts he was a councillor of the NSPCC. When his fellow Old Marlburian, Ross McWhirter, was murdered by the IRA in 1975, Michael Hooker took a lead with Lord Boyd of Guinness in establishing the foundation in his name to foster his example of courageous leadership and active citizenship.

His final and perhaps favourite contribution to the world of education was as principal adviser in the founding of Newton Prep, a co-educational preparatory school in Battersea with a special provision for gifted and talented children. It was launched in 1991 in an old triple-decker building and has grown with his help to more than 575 pupils from diverse backgrounds with ever-improving facilities.

Among his special concerns was a means-tested scholarship fund and the Newton Inter-faith Group. He was altogether a fine old-fashioned Christian gentleman who was thoroughly at home in the modern world.