You may not have heard of him, and neither had I, but Wizz Jones was a pioneering figure in British folk: a man described by Bert Jansch as “the most underrated guitarist ever.”

Reading about him for the first time in his obits, he seems like a remarkable character; a bohemian folkie who never had the ambition to seize the opportunities for fame and fortune taken by those around him; Jansch himself said Jones “should have been a superstar.”

And not just folk but rock – Jones gave guitar lessons to a teenage Keith Richards when the future Stone was at art college and was billed to support Sonic Youth in America in 2011 but was halfway to New York on September 11 when his plane was turned back.

That unfortunate timing pretty much sums up his entire career as a nearly man. Over eight decades he’s played with everyone – Eric Clapton, Billy Connolly, Martin Carthy, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and even Sonic Youth. Yet his self-deprecation and easy-going nature meant he remained a nearly man in terms of mainstream fame.

He once helped launch a career by suggesting to a young Ralph May that he should change his surname to McTell. And in 2012, Bruce Springsteen opened a show in front of 55,000 people in Berlin with his song When I Leave Berlin.

One of Britain’s first beatniks, Jones was an astounding acoustic guitarist, and apparently caused “teatime consternation across the nation” when Alan Whicker interviewed him on the BBC current affairs programme Tonight in 1960.

The piece was about a small group of beatniks “invading” Newquay during summertime, resulting in the local council trying to ban them from the town for having long hair and being “dirty.”

Jones, then aged 21, was interviewed with remarkable sympathy by Whicker, a brilliant TV journalist who belied his stiff-upper-lip appearance by grilling the local townsfolk – including a pompous councillor – with sufficient skill to make them make themselves look foolish.

The archetypal “musician’s musician,” he made many marvellous records showcasing his fingerpicking guitar technique, which Clapton once admitted copying in every detail, and there are many marvellous stories about his kindness and humility.

A favourite relates to the time he played at the 2013 concert at the Royal Festival Hall to mark what would have been Bert Jansch’s 70th birthday, where the all-star line-up was asked to play for the Musicians’ Union’s then minimum rates.

Some of the more famous ones baulked at the paltry sum on offer but when the promoter told Wizz what the minimum rate was, he replied: “That seems like a lot of money for playing a couple of songs. Do you mind if I give some of it away?”