With his easy grin, outgoing personality and generous encouragement of his fellow musicians, Allan Ganley was one of the most likeable and admired musicians in British jazz, as well as being one of its most distinguished drummers, composers and bandleaders.

The list of stellar musicians for whom he had played is long, and when such luminaries as Blossom Dearie, Dizzy Gillespie, Peggy Lee or Stephane Grappelli came to these shores, more often than not it was Ganley who accompanied them.

He had been a regular colleague of (Sir) John Dankworth and (Dame) Cleo Laine since 1953, and had been due to play with them at the Gateshead International Jazz Festival when he was admitted to hospital.

Born in Tolworth, Surrey, in 1931 Allan Ganley began playing the drums in his teens, but did not become a professional percussionist until the end of his RAF National Service in 1952. His skills were soon apparent and in his first year as a full-time musician he played for Ambrose and Jack Parnell, before joining Dankworth’s newly formed big band in 1953. This had been an ambition of his since his service days, when he would use his free time to hear Dankworth’s Seven, and he recalled: “I used to go and watch the drummer Tony Kinsey play all night with them at the 51 Club so that I could try to copy what he was doing.”

After two years with Dankworth, Ganley began working with the cream of British jazz musicians including Ronnie Scott and Kenny Baker. He travelled, as did so many of his colleagues, to the United States as a band musician on the Queen Mary, to hear contemporary jazz first hand, but then returned to the US for tours with Scott, and with the Jazzmakers, which he co-led.

After a spell with the brilliant saxophonist Tubby Hayes, he became the house drummer at Ronnie Scott’s club for much of the mid-1960s, accompanying many American stars, including the notoriously hard-to-satisfy Stan Getz. He also worked frequently with the Dankworths, appearing on some of their best records from that decade.

Although Ganley had reached the top of his profession as a drummer, he wanted to develop other aspects of music, in particular writing and arranging. As a result he left Britain for almost ten years from 1967, taking a job with Joe Wylie’s band in Bermuda, for whom he could write as well as drum. He also took a course in composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1970.

On his return to Britain in 1976, Ganley established the pattern of work which he was to follow for the rest of his life. He played on countless recording sessions — including George Shearing’s famous album with the Robert Farnon Orchestra — and led his own groups from sextets to big bands. His own orchestras always showed an interesting and unusual ear for arranging, but he was so much in demand for work with Dankworth and Laine, Georgie Fame, the BBC Big Band and a host of other commitments, that he was not able to perform his own music as much as he would have liked. However, he was rewarded by being voted composer of the year in the 1990 British Jazz Awards.

Stylistically, Ganley was wide ranging, happily taking on the modern jazz of Sonny Rollins, Tony Coe or Stan Tracey, but also playing with Digby Fairweather in the traditionally inspired Great British Jazz Band. He was an incisive and powerful big-band player, as his recently reissued work with Dankworth’s 1950s band shows, but he was capable of great gentleness and sensitivity when backing singers such as Elaine Delmar or Marion Montgomery.

He had recently recorded with Dankworth’s quintet and is the drummer on the forthcoming album World Jazz with Dankworth’s Big Band, recorded last year and performed at the Barbican in February.

His wife and daughter survive him.

Allan Ganley, jazz drummer, composer and bandleader, was born on March 11, 1931. He died of complications after heart surgery on March 29, 2008, aged 77