The drummer Bobby Graham, who has died of cancer aged 69, was one of the most prolific studio musicians during British pop's epic years of the 1960s, and was described by the producer Shel Talmy as "the greatest drummer the UK has ever produced". He is believed to have played on 15,000 recordings, and also won himself a niche in musical history by turning down an offer to join the Beatles in 1962. "Why would I want to join a band in Liverpool that nobody's ever heard of?" Graham had retorted.
Born in Edmonton, north London, Graham began his drumming career by bashing away at a home-made kit given to him by his father. He made such rapid progress that his parents soon bought him a real drumkit, and Graham learned his craft by playing along to big-band recordings. He left school at 15 with the intention of becoming a jazz drummer, but after playing weekly gigs in the Witch's Cauldron coffee bar in Hampstead, in 1960 he was offered a job playing cover versions with a rock'n'roll band, Billy Gray and the Stormers, at a Butlins holiday camp in Yorkshire.
The group caught the ear of the maverick producer Joe Meek, who renamed them the Outlaws and hired them to back up his proteges Mike Berry and John Leyton. However, Graham grew exasperated with the brilliant but unstable Meek, and accepted an offer to join Joe Brown's band, the Bruvvers. He was on tour with Brown in Liverpool when he was offered the Beatles job, because their original drummer Pete Best was proving unsatisfactory.
Graham left Brown in 1963 ("We didn't always see eye to eye. I was pretty wild in those days," he recalled) and joined Marty Wilde's Wildcats. His skills began to attract wider attention, and he played his first date as a session musician on Davey Graham's album The Guitar Player in 1962. Then he was spotted by John Barry and spent six months with the John Barry Seven.
Now with a young family to support, Graham opted for the security of full-time session work. He would frequently play three sessions a day, starting at 10am and finishing at 2am the following morning. Graham displayed an instinctive feel for rock'n'roll, and often found himself in a studio with other regulars such as the pianist Arthur Greenslade and the future Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
Graham would be called on to play anything from film soundtracks to orchestral recordings with PJ Proby or Petula Clark to small-band sessions with the Kinks (he played on You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night). He appeared on countless hits of the period, from Tom Jones's Green Green Grass of Home and Dusty Springfield's I Only Want to Be With You to the Walker Brothers' Make It Easy on Yourself. He also claimed to have drummed with the Dave Clark Five, though Dave Clark denied this. In 1964 Graham cut his teeth as a producer with the Pretty Things, and made his own debut single, Skin Deep, in 1965.
His career developed a continental slant when he was recruited by the French label owner Eddie Barclay to record English acts for the French market, but Graham soon learned that "you could not get anything English off the ground in France" and called it a day. Then, a meeting with a Dutch producer, Freddie Haayan, led to four years in the Netherlands working with Dutch acts, but Graham developed a debilitating drink problem and returned to England in 1971.
Successfully dried out, he worked for a while producing artists for Christian labels, then opened a record shop in Edmonton called The Trading Post. In the 1980s he moved away from music and formed a company making corporate training videos, but when this foundered Graham returned to the drums. He formed his own band, The Jazz Experience, and played around north London and Hertfordshire.
He was diagnosed with stomach cancer in April. He is survived by his wife. Belinda, son Shawn and brother Ian.