Wally Ridley was one of Britain’s most innovative and respected record producers. In the late 1940s he joined EMI Records as a producer for the HMV label and went on to to sign such singers as Alma Cogan, Donald Peers, Anne Shelton and Ronnie Hilton, as well as the bandleader Joe Loss and the comedian Benny Hill. He transformed HMV into a leading outlet for popular music and played a key role in making EMI profitable in the 1950s and 1960s.

He guided the early career of Vera Lynn, and it was his decision that EMI should acquire for UK release Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel from RCA Records. By the 1960s he had signed the rock’n’roll band Johnny Kidd and the Pirates.

Ridley also wrote more than 200 songs, among them I’m in Love for the Very First Time.

Walter John Ridley was born in London in 1913. He was a talented pianist and at 13 won a scholarship from Northern Polytechnic to study the manufacture of pianos. In 1928 he entered the music business, first as a song plugger and then as a manager at the Peter Maurice song-publishing company.

During the war he worked with Vera Lynn, the “Forces sweetheart”, and was responsible for her recording We’ll Meet Again, her signature tune.

In 1949 he and the ventriloquist Peter Brough created the concept of the radio show Educating Archie for the BBC and from 1950 it became one of the most successful radio comedies. It was the first time a ventriloquist had appeared on radio in the UK, and the supporting stars included a roll call of British comedy: Tony Hancock, Beryl Reid, Dick Emery, Harry Secombe, Ronald Shiner and many others.

Ridley went into the recording business in 1948 when EMI engaged him as a producer to build up a wider catalogue for the then classical HMV label. He had great success signing stars such as Max Bygraves ( Try Another Cherry Tree), Donald Peers ( Powder Your Face with Sunshine) and Joe Loss.

Ridley’s greatest success in the 1950s was with the young Alma Cogan ( Dreamboat) and he also signed Malcolm Vaughan, the Mike Sammes Singers and Rosemary Squires.

Popular music in Britain changed radically in the late 1950s under the influence of American rock’n’roll and skiffle artists such as Lonnie Donegan. Ridley’s musical tastes were essentially old-fashioned but he did, if somewhat reluctantly, move with the times and in 1958 signed Johnny Kidd and the Pirates to EMI.

He was horrified, however, when he first heard the group: “It was just a loud, howling, metallic noise and this went on for two and a half hours.”

The Pirates’ recording of Shakin’ All Overreached No 1 in the UK charts in 1960. Ridley also signed the Swinging Blue Jeans who had a hit with The Hippy Hippy Shake in 1963.

On more familiar territory Ridley found the song Bring Me Sunshine for Morecambe and Wise and Whispering Grass for Don Estelle and Windsor Davies, a No 1 hit for the duo in 1975. He also produced several Black and White Minstrel Show albums.

Ridley retired in 1977, the same year that HMV ceased to exist as a recording label, but he still produced albums occasionally, notably Love is José Carreras (1984).

He won two Ivor Novello Awards for his contribution to the music industry.

Ridley is survived by a son and two daughters.

Wally Ridley, record producer, was born on February 28, 1913. He died on January 23, 2007, aged 93