Andy White: Drummer who played with Fury and Bacharach but was best known as Ringo Starr's stand-in on Love Me Do

With White on drums, the Beatles recorded "Love Me Do" (with Starr on tambourine), "PS I Love You" (Starr on maracas) and an early version of "Please Please Me"

White in 2000, pointing to the man whose seat he kept warm for a day (Rex)

In 1962 the Beatles recorded "Love Me Do" at EMI's Abbey Road Studios with three different drummers. In June, it was Pete Best, but his wayward playing had not impressed their producer, George Martin. They returned on 4 September with Ringo Starr in the drum-seat. Martin wanted to try again on 11 September, but when they arrived, they found a session musician Andy White already in the studio.

With White on drums, they recorded "Love Me Do" (with Starr on tambourine), "PS I Love You" (Starr on maracas) and an early version of "Please Please Me". There was little difference in the September versions of "Love Me Do" and Ringo's was used on the first pressings of the Parlophone single and Andy White's on the Please Please Me LP. You may have a version of "Love Me Do" in your collection: if you can hear a tambourine, then it is with Andy White on drums.

White was born to Scottish parents in London in 1930 but he was raised in Glasgow, the son of a baker. He had little hearing in his left ear and he told me in 2002, "I suppose it must have impeded my playing, but I was never really aware of it as I didn't know what perfect hearing was."

From the age of 12, White was playing drums in a bagpipe band, and he admired the jazz drumming of Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa. When he was 17, he had a full-time job playing in a ballroom in Ayr; after that, he spent a summer in a holiday camp in the Isle of Wight, and the bandleader, Vic Lewis, asked him to join his orchestra.

In 1957 Lewis's orchestra toured the UK in a variety package topped by Bill Haley and his Comets. "That was wonderful," said White, "We did three numbers and backed the other acts. I got a feel for rock'n'roll from watching Haley and I liked talking to his drummer. This was the real thing as the British bands were playing rock'n'roll as though it were a new version of the jitterbug."

White became part of the house band for the BBC beat programme Drumbeat, and then the producer Jack Good recruited him for the Firing Squad, created for the ITV series Boy Meets Girls. The band featured Joe Brown (lead guitar), Brian Daly and Eric Ford (rhythm guitar), Red Price (tenor sax), Cherry Wainer (organ), Alan Weighall (electric bass), Bill Stark (double-bass), and Don Storer and Andy White (drums). The Vernons Girls supplied backing vocals as appropriate.

White was entranced, saying, "I loved working with the Americans, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. I did a lot of work with the guys from Larry Parnes' stable – Joe Brown, Marty Wilde and Billy Fury – both on TV and on their records."

In April 1960 Billy Fury recorded The Sound Of Fury with Brown, Stark, Weighell, White and Reg Guest on piano. Fury wrote all the songs, and it matched anything that came from the Sun studios in Memphis. In the same year, White played on Lita Roza's album, Drinka Lita Roza Day, which was recorded at the Prospect of Whitby pub in Wapping. As Sinclair Traill said in his sleeve note, the album features "eight musicians, all trying to look as if it were their first appearance on licensed premises."

In 1961 White joined the orchestra for Anthony Newley's West End success, Stop The World, I Want To Get Off, which ran for more than 500 performances. In April 1962 he married Lyn Cornell, a solo singer who had left the Vernons Girls, but Newley wouldn't allow him time off for a honeymoon. When the show ended, they went on honeymoon; as soon as they returned, White was invited to Abbey Road.

Jack Good's arranger Bill Shepherd was a friend of Ron Richards who worked for George Martin. When Martin wanted to book a session drummer for the Beatles, Shepherd recommended White. For a mere £5 and an additional 10 shillings' porterage, White took his drums to Abbey Road. "I was booked for a three-hour session and I wasn't told what it was for. The Beatles arrived as I was setting up and they had no written music. John and Paul were very helpful, though. They played the songs through to me without Ringo and I could see where the fill-ins would come. I don't think Ringo was too pleased about it."

White then joined Marlene Dietrich, working under her conductor, Burt Bacharach. I recalled seeing Dietrich in Liverpool, and admirers giving her flowers. "Oh, that was all staged. Someone had the job of getting fresh flowers everywhere we played, but it was wonderful to be with her. She treated us all like family." Back in the UK, White played on many hits including Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual" and worked with Chuck Berry and Herman's Hermits. In 1968 he was part of the band backing Tiny Tim at the Royal Albert Hall. "I know all four Beatles were in the audience, but I don't think they would have known that I was on drums."

When White and Cornell divorced, he moved to Glasgow and played in the BBC Orchestra. When their regional orchestras were cut, he moved to New York and taught both standard drumming and drumming in pipe bands. He remarried, this time to Thea White, a librarian who also supplied voices for cartoons. In 2009, he played drums on a new version of "PS I Love You" by the Smithereens.

SPENCER LEIGH

Andrew White, drummer: born London 27 July 1930; twice married; died New Jersey 9 November 2015.