Weedon, Bert

In 1950 guitars were rare in the UK and sales barely touched 5,000, but Elvis, Cliff and British rock ’n’ roll changed all that. In 1957, when Play in a Day was first published, annual UK guitar sales topped a quarter of a million and the number of people wanting to learn the guitar vastly outnumbered those capable of teaching it – a situation well understood by Bert, who wrote in his Introduction that he wanted his book to contain ‘the essential requirements of the lone student without a teacher’. It went straight to the top of the bestseller list and stayed there for several months. With sales to date totalling around 4 million, Play in a Day is the world’s biggest selling guitar tutor and it’s never been out of print.