Bandleader, singer and trumpeter; Born April 28, 1918; Died October 20, 2008.

Tommy Sampson, who has died aged 90, was a bandleader whose name may not have the same resonance as Ted Heath's or Johnny Dankworth's, but who deserves his place in the British jazz hall of fame as the man who raised the game of British big-band players.

Born in Newhaven, Edinburgh, Sampson was the son of a prominent clerk of works and his musical talent was nurtured within the Salvation Army. A cornet soloist at the of 14, and depute bandmaster of the Leith Corps band at 18, he made his broadcast debut on the BBC in 1933, playing on Children's Hour with the George Watson's College dance band, before going on to play trumpet with an Edinburgh band.

Commissioned into the Royal Artillery at the end of 1940, Sampson was captured at the fall of Tobruk in June 1942. As a PoW in Italy, he mustered a big band, choirs and even a full symphony orchestra made up from the professional and amateur musicians held with him.

A gifted arranger, he put his captivity to good use and was able to put his ideas straight from his head on to paper. The band greatly impressed the prison camp authorities, who failed to spot that Sampson would sometimes play using only two valves, concealing from the guards that he had replaced his third with a tightly folded map of escape plans. He later went on to say that his experience as a PoW was the making of him.

Following his demob in 1946, and using funds provided by his father, Sampson formed a 17-piece big band in 1947 to play in Leith's Eldorado Ballroom. Most British dance bands of the day played a genteel form of swing without the ensemble punch of the American bands; Sampson decided his would play hard, driving, jazz-oriented swing, and would use only those players who had fully mastered the techniques of American jazz musicians. It was one of the first bands of its kind in the UK, and it took British music by storm.

Playing Sampson's own arrangements along with the outstanding scores of arranger Edwin Holland, the band had a power and drive of remarkable intensity, and generated tremendous excitement. Although it made many BBC broadcasts, it never produced a commercial recording. The only records that exist are wax dubbings by a private London company, which are now prized collectors' items.

Most of the band's players went on to become stalwarts of British music, including Joe Temperley, who went on to play baritone sax with Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis; clarinettist Henry MacKenzie; trumpeters Stan Reynolds, Duncan Campbell and Eddie Blair; bass player Johnny Hawksworth, vocalist Rosemary Squires and trombonist and arranger Johnny Keating.

One person listening closely was bandleader Ted Heath. Though his band was only a few years old itself, Heath was already an internationally acclaimed name. Aware of the quality of Sampson's band, Heath gradually poached more than half of Sampson's star players to join him in London.

This, coupled with the tiring schedule of rehearsals and one-nighters, and a refusal to play commercial music, led to Sampson folding the band in 1949 when its library of music disappeared from a left-luggage office. Broke and stranded in London, Sampson joined music publishers Chappell as a song plugger, while freelancing as an arranger for some big-name bands including Geraldo and the BBC Radio Orchestra, and making up ad-hoc vocal groups for broadcasts and recordings. The broadcaster David Jacobs said the vocal group on one of Sampson's 1950s singles was the best he had ever heard, unaware that the four singers were all in fact Tommy Sampson, recorded in an early example of multi-tracking.

Sampson worked with many stars of stage and television, including Audrey Hepburn, Frankie Vaughan, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Joe Loss and Billy Connolly. He also became a member of the Sapphires vocal group, and one of the staff arrangers for the long-running BBC variety programme The Black and White Minstrel Show.

Back in Scotland, Sampson became the leading feature on what was left of the Scottish dance band scene. A regular fixture in ballrooms in Glasgow and Edinburgh, he became musical director for bands performing at Gleneagles and the Edinburgh Sheraton. He continued to encourage new talent, bringing on a new generation of musicians including baritone saxophonist Jay Craig, trombonist Gordon Campbell and trumpeter Bruce Adams.

Craig, a former member of the Buddy Rich band and a member of the BBC Big Band for 15 years, said: "It was the best apprenticeship I could have had. There isn't a professional musician in the UK that I know of who didn't admire, in many ways revere, Tommy Sampson for his skill as an arranger. He was a kind of father figure to me."

Illness prevented Sampson from attending a special 90th birthday tribute in April in Edinburgh's Queen's Hall, but he was back on the stand in August at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival for what was to be his last performance in front of an all-star band. The same band played several of his arrangements at his funeral.

Sampson was a man of many musical parts during his long career, but he was more highly regarded throughout the country than any other British bandleader. He is survived by his wife, Lise, and daughters Helle and Doris.

Stephen Duffy