He admitted later They thought I was a boozer and a ne'er-do-well

He admitted later, "They thought I was a boozer and a ne'er-do-well. I was always in the pub across the road when the bus was about to go." Once, when the musicians could not afford a meal, he went into a field and brought them back some turnips.Another musician, Clinton Ford, recalls, "He could be a pest at times, but I really liked the guy. He would supplement his income by playing roulette with the adolescent stars. There was the knockabout "My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes", a mysterious version of "She Moved Thro' the Fair", the standard "Moonlight Becomes You" and an invigorating treatment of the Irish folk song "Three Lovely Lasses From Bannion".Denver, an experienced man in his late twenties, found himself touring on package shows with the teen idols of the day. The songs on his LPs display the wide ranges of his voice and repertoire. Although "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was already in the charts, Denver's version was so electrifying that it stormed past the Tokens to reach No 4 in March 1962.Denver's first album, also called Wimoweh, reached the Top Ten.

Denver's fans in Manchester organised a petition for Decca to release "Wimoweh" as a single. It made the US charts and started to gain popularity in Britain. Around this time, quite independently, an American doo-wop group called the Tokens had alighted on "Wimoweh" and added some lyrics, calling it "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". It was a hell of a range that I did it in." The press release from June 1961 says, "A pint-sized Scot with a king-sized yodel and a siren voice that packs the power of a hurricane blows onto the disc world this week." Denver, conscious of his size, was one of the first performers to wear Cuban heels."Marcheta" made No 8 on the charts, as did his second single, a revival of an old-time country song, "Mexicali Rose".

"The lyrics were beautiful, but it was my range that grabbed the people. Decca recorded "Wimoweh" at the end of Denver's first session but decided that it was too bizarre to release as his first single.Instead they selected "Marcheta", a revival of a 1912 ballad Denver didn't mind. However, it had been recorded in 1952 by the Weavers featuring Pete Seeger and Denver's version is clearly based on this. He said, "I had a son called Karl who was killed and I thought I would keep his name. For a time I lived in Fort Collins in Colorado and I thought Denver was a good place, so I became Karl Denver."Soon he was established around the Lancashire clubs and pubs, notably the Yew Tree in Manchester, and the television producer Jack Good offered him work on a new ITV series, Wham! Good also produced Denver's records for Decca; with two excellent musicians, the guitarist Kevin Neill from the Joe Loss Orchestra and the bassist Jerry Cottrell, the Karl Denver Trio was formed.The highlight of Denver's act was a fiery version of a Zulu chant, "Wimoweh", which he claimed to have learnt in Africa. In 1956, he was offered a management and recording contract, but, as he said, "I was asked to sign up, but I had to do the bump as I shouldn't have been there in the first place."He returned to the UK and settled in Blackburn, Lancashire, where he renamed himself Karl Denver. He was such a tough, hard-living character that the Rhodesians gave him the nickname "Boaty Maseteno", meaning "brother of Satan".Still only 21, he jumped ship in America and played in clubs in Tennessee and Denver.

He befriended the country singers Faron Young and Lefty Frizzell and became the first British performer to play on the Grand Ole Opry radio show. Next he went into the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and was wounded during the Korean War Then he returned to the sea. First he joined the Scandinavian Mercantile Marine as a deckhand and was soon travelling the world He practised the guitar and entertained his shipmates. He left school at 14 and embarked on a decade of wanderlust and adventure. For a start, how many other pop singers of the day could yodel? He was born Angus Murdo Mckenzie, in Glasgow, in 1932. And, like Donegan, Denver had such a distinctive voice that whatever he sang automatically became his own. With the exception of Lonnie Donegan, no other artist in the early 1960s worked from such a broad base.

But he was also a versatile singer and acoustic guitarist and he chose good songs irrespective of their sources - turn-of-the-century ballads, music-hall favourites and contemporary pop songs as well as folk, country and rock'n'roll material. TO MANY people, Karl Denver was a novelty performer, known for his octave-spanning acrobatics on the 1962 hit "Wimoweh". On Remembrance Sunday, it was he who laid the Special Forces Club wreath at the SOE memorial in Westminster Abbey Cloisters.Brian Julian Warry-Stonehouse, soldier and artist: born Torquay, Devon 29 August 1918; MBE 1945; died London circa 2 December 1998.. He had a flat in London and a small place in Suffolk and became well-known to a discriminating field. His portrait of the Queen Mother dominates the bar of the Special Forces Club of which he was a pillar; and he had just finished a second portrait of her which was unveiled last month at the King Edward VII Hospital as a thank- offering for their care of her hip.