Francis Wilford-Smith (né Wilford Smith[a]; 12 March 1927 – 4 December 2009) was a British cartoonist, graphic artist, and producer and archivist of blues music.
During this time he also worked as an undercover courier and agent for US Naval Intelligence, intercepting telephone conversations and collecting and delivering material to US consular staff in the Belgian Congo and Persian Gulf.
From the early 1960s, he also worked widely in Europe and the USA, publishing cartoons in various periodicals including The New Yorker, Esquire, and the Saturday Evening Post.
In the late 1950s and 1960s he was responsible for recording many musicians, such as Roosevelt Sykes, Little Brother Montgomery, Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Champion Jack Dupree, and Memphis Slim, at his home in Sussex.
So I would stagger down from London to my Sussex farmhouse with a heavy hired tape recorder and microphone, and get a local farmer to load the village hall piano onto a trailer, bring it down by tractor, and install it in my living room where the thick walls and beamed ceiling had good acoustic properties."