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My friend Bill Leader, who has died aged 96, was a folk music record producer responsible for bringing together and shaping recordings by, among others, Billy Connolly, Gerry Rafferty, Mike Harding, Christy Moore, Luke Kelly, Aly Bain, Dick Gaughan and Barbara Dickson.

Working in conjunction with Topic Records, Transatlantic Records and two of his own labels, Leader and Trailer, Bill supervised the recording of more than 400 albums over the years, also working with Ewan MacColl, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Pentangle, the Dubliners and Planxty.

Later he became a lecturer in recording techniques at Salford Advanced College of Technology (now Salford University) and remained there for 30 years, retiring as a visiting professor.

Bill was born in Newark, New Jersey, to William Leader, a tool maker, and Lou (also Leader), who were first cousins once-removed. When he was two his parents, who were British, returned to the UK during the Great Depression, and settled in London.

At 10 he was evacuated during the second world war to the West Riding of Yorkshire, where he went to Shipley Selective Central school. At 16 he was apprenticed as an electrical fitter to the Airedale Electrical and Manufacturing company in Bradford, but in his early 20s he moved back to London, initially working in a film library before settling at Topic Records in 1956 as a production manager.

Topic, which still thrives today, had been set up in 1939 by the Workers’ Music Association, which aimed to propagate grassroots music and to record it for posterity. Bill initially helped to do this with field recordings of folk musicians in his flat in Camden Town, north London, as well as in the pubs of the area, which were frequented by musicians of the Irish diaspora.

As a result he became an important part of the folk revival of the 1950s, and over the next two decades was involved in producing albums by many of the greats of the genre. He moved to producing for Topic on a freelance basis in the mid-60s, an arrangement that allowed him also to work for Transatlantic Records, which had been established in 1961, before setting up the Leader and Trailer record labels in 1970 with his second wife, Helen (nee Heron), whom he had married in 1969 with Connolly as their best man.

The Leader label focused on traditional musicians, while Trailer was for newly emerging performers on the Irish, Scottish and English scenes. Both were successful for a time, until events conspired to force their closure at the end of the 70s.

At the age of 53 Bill was then taken on by Salford College of Advanced Technology to teach recording and microphone techniques on its BTec audiology course. After the college became Salford University in 1967 he lectured on its degree modules on band musicianship, and popular music and recording, while setting up a recording studio to support those programmes.

Bill retired in 1995 but remained a visiting professor at Salford until 2011. In 2012 he received the Good Tradition Award from the BBC Radio 2 Folk Show and the Gold Badge Award from the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

He is survived by his third wife, Lynne (nee Porter), a music librarian at Salford University, whom he married in 1998, by their daughter, Annie, a son, Tom, from his first marriage to Gloria Whittington, which ended in divorce, and another daughter, Amy, from his second marriage, which also ended in divorce.