He is described as the father of modern DJ music. Ron Diggins, from Boston, Lincolnshire, is credited with being the first person to use two record decks to blend seamlessly between tracks.
Now, a BBC Sounds documentary is shedding light on his life and an exhibition has celebrated his pioneering work.
It turns out that one of the earliest DJ decks was made out of wood intended for a very different purpose – coffins.
From a comfy armchair in a sunny conservatory in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, 93-year-old Brian Golland smiles as he recalls his time working with Ron in the early 1950s.
It was a time when wood was still in short supply after the war, but "he knew an undertaker and managed to buy some", Golland says.
Diggins was working in secret on something he called a "Diggola".
The electric machine (the name was inspired by a kind of jukebox, The Rock 'n' Rolla) was able to play two records in quick succession, something industry experts say had not been done before.
"He pioneered the beginnings of DJ culture by twinning two decks together," says Carl Loben, the editor-in-chief of DJ Mag.
"He created a machine: a mobile disco deck. He could bring it into rooms and dance halls and play music.
"In essence it was the forerunner of DJ culture as we know it today."
"Without Ron, there may well have been no Fatboy Slim, no Calvin Harris and even possibly no international dance music culture whatsoever," Loben adds.
Diggins began playing records for parties and dances in the late 1940s, after a request from local women serving in the Land Army.
"He realised there was a gap in the market," says David Worthington, the curator of an exhibition about Diggins at the Guildhall Museum in Boston.
At the time, people who played records at dances would use a single turntable and typically talk over the process of switching from one record to another.
"Ron came up with this idea of cueing decks so that he could cue another record and then flick the deck down and the needle would go," Worthington says.