The few times I've met Pete Wingfield he's always struck me as one of the happiest guys around. Behind his beard his face dances with smiles while it seems like he's habitually rubbing his hands together with glee.

Of course it could just be the thought of the money he's making which puts him in such a good mood. After all, above and beyond his career as a record producer, Pete Wingfield has long been one of Britain's hardest working and best paid session musicians — triple scale no object. The list of those whose hits have been fired up by his tinkling ivories would stretch from here to the middle of next week. And read like a virtual Who's Who of British Pop over the last 15 years. From the sublime to the ridiculous.

But in his case I don't reckon it's a question of the moolah making the man. Caught in the mortgage trap like everyone else, and bemoaning the crippling deprecation in value of the keyboards which are the tools of his trade, Wingfield may be well off but he's certainly not wealthy. And yet if he is genuinely one of the happiest guys around then it's quite simple because he lives and breathes music and oozes enthusiasm and enjoyment wherever he goes. Which makes him a rare animal indeed in these sadly cynical and mercenary times.

Soul Music is Wingfield's speciality. And by Soul Music you should really read anything black and American with a recognisable groove which has ever found its way onto vinyl over the last 35 odd years. If it was any good at all then you'll probably find a copy of it somewhere in the vast record collection which dominates the music room in Wingfield's South West London home. Or else you probably read him writing about it in the days, not so long ago, when he was a regular contributor to Melody Maker and Let It Rock magazines. More importantly though Pete Wingfield will be able to play it to you at the drop of a hat should you ask him. Mention a typical New Orleans piano figure from 1964 and before you can say 'Lee Dorsey' Wingfield is at the upright second lining it for all he's worth.

"Sorry I haven't got an organ set up," he says, "Or else I'd show you the riff which made those Al Green records happen."

We were barely 10 minutes into our interview and already it felt like I had nailed him down as the Renaissance Man of British Soul. With all that background knowledge and technical expertise to flesh out my theory, and a brace of hit records — like his own 1975 Top Tenner Eighteen With A Bullet, Dexy's Geno, Alison Moyet's That Ole Devil Called Love and the Kane Gang's Respect Yourself — as the evidence to prove the point in court.

But Pete Wingfield was wary of the label.

"I'm definitely a Soul man. I always have been and I always will be. But I really don't like to get involved in nostalgic-type records. Not if it can be avoided. I like records with roots, so that you can tell that the people playing know what they're doing and haven't grabbed it third or forth hand. You can tell that very easily. I do like a bit of pedigree and perspective too. But actually I listen to far more modern music than I do old."

And he waved at a whole brace of Hip-Hop and Go-Go releases propped up beside the stereo in case I missed his point. I stuck with mine, however, and wondered whether those recent successes with Alf and the Kane Gang didn't tell quite a different truth.

"Well, maybe. But both those record were only hits in this country. My biggest successes overall in the last couple of years have been with Mel Brooks and there was nothing old-fashioned about them. I did It's Good To Be The King and The Hitler Rap with him. They were both bang up-to-date modern Funk records and they were far bigger internationally than anything else I've done. They're both examples of the quickest and most painless records to make being the most successful."

I stood corrected as Pete Wingfield related how he'd been enrolled to cowrite and produce the theme songs for Mel Brooks' last two movies The History Of The World Part 1 and To Be Or Not To Be.

"Mel is a Jazzer at heart and he'd never heard any rap records until I played him some to explain the genre. He listened for a bit and then he said 'You mean these people get paid to talk?! I'll do it!' We talked about the concept of Louis XIV rapping It's Good To Be The King, which was the catch phrase from History Of The World, and the idea of sounding Black and French really made him laugh. I already had the hook worked up, it took us a day in a hotel room to write the lyrics and another to record it completely. It was a quick in-and-out-job, blink and you miss it. The Hitler Rap was only supposed to be a soundalike follow-up and we went through the same routine. We made the record and thought 'Forget Germany for a start!' But it turned out to be a Top 20 hit over there. Probably because it caused some sort of controversy and questions were asked in the house, or whatever the Teutonic equivalent is.

"Apart from some guitar and congas I played everything on those records so they were very quick to make. I did the same just recently for Michael Winslow on Island. He's a black American comic who was in 'Police Academy' and he makes noises with his mouth. He can imitate any sound. Car doors, sirens, dogs, Jimi Hendrix, anything. It's called I Am My Own Walkman and it's a pretty funny modern rap thing too."

Fair enough, but despite the fact the man can boast the most up-to-date credentials, and even claims that last year's work with US rappers The Sugarhill Gang is some of the best he's ever done, home is based squarely and fairly on an ability to update the tried and tested old gold Soul formats and put them back in the charts. The Kane Gang's recent cover of the Staple Singers' Respect Yourself being a perfect example.

"I think we managed to strike a nice balance between the spirit of the original with a more modern Electropop feel. And I like mixing influences like that. The fact that we had Pat Arnold on it doing the backing vocals made a lot of difference and helped to sort things out. I enjoy working with the sort of modern setup like the Kane Gang's where there's only one musician, a couple of singers and no rhythm section. You can afford to be much more analytical and tear down the song completely before you build it up. I'm an absolute fanatic when it comes to the groove, you see. In fact I'm thinking of having a plaque made to carry around with me saying Groove Is King. The bottom end of a track, whether it be a live drummer or a drum machine, has to be exactly right. Because if it isn't then nothing else will be as far as I'm concerned."

But don't you run the risk of losing the soul and the feel if you regiment it too much?

"God No! Not if you know what you're doing. You have to organise your track meticulously. The bottom end has to be as tight as tight can be. In the heyday of Disco I think it is probably true that there was a lot of soulless Soul around. Most of it came from Europe. But it's not so now. Standards have changed and I don't believe the public will accept anything that's out-of-time any more. A non-musician may not realise that timing is what is wrong with a track but he'll certainly recognise that something isn't right. Whereas, in the early Seventies it was considered pretty cool if things slowed down or sped up, the modern ear has become accustomed to exactitude now and you can't fight it. It's the current conditioning so if you're making records you can't afford to ignore it. It's practical too. If you're working with sequencers and triggers and so on, there's no way the speed of things can fluctuate."

Do you think it's easier to make a good record now than it used to be?

"It's as easy as pie! But what people forget about is the singing. I can't stand anything sung out-of-tune, and I am old-fashioned about that, which is why I try to avoid working with singers who are in that non-singing sort of bag. All the machinery around these days throws vocal weaknesses into sharp relief. I don't know how many times I've heard records, especially in the dance rock white Soul area, where the track is really happening and then the voice comes in and kills it dead. And it's only because the vocals are the last thing they think about and the don't take enough trouble over them."

So how do you take enough trouble over vocals? How do you get the best out of an indifferent singer? This is a question that has troubled many an engineer and would-be producer over the years — and one I frequently ask in the course of these IM interviews. Few have suggested the workmanlike but, in most cases, highly successful approach that is Pete Wingfield's:

"I regard it essential to keep some sense of spontaneity. So I make sure we have enough tracks spare so that we can start taking as soon as the singer goes into the studio and get down the first few times he runs through the song without stopping to analyse what he's doing. That preserves the freshness. Then I bounce together a composite version of the best of all those takes and we review it to see if there any any weak spots. And then we home in on them. The last thing I like to do is go through a song line by line because after a while the guy's looking at the words and they don't mean a thing to him any more. And he begins to panic if things don't go right. At least my way he's relaxed because he knows we're working to a good take so all we're doing is adding the icing to the cake. That's how I regard the crux of my job as a producer. To capture the exactitude without losing the feel."

It's my bet Peter Wingfield had few worries in that respect when he cut That Ole Devil Called Love with Alison Moyet and brought Billie Holldiay back into the charts with a vegeance. Originally, it seems, Moyet asked him in to cut a new version of Gladys Knight's Don't Burn Down The Bridge and to remix some live tapes from a BBC TV show, one of which was That Ole Devil, for the B side. Ultimately, of course, the tracks were issued the other way round!

"Once it was done I think everybody agreed that Don't Burn Down The Bridge wasn't really strong enough as a song. On the other hand That Ole Devil had been going down so well live CBS were prepared to consider it as the A side. But we had to re-record it because the live version was just a bit too loose. We augmented Alison's horn section with some Jazz players I know and re-scored the song to take out some rather prissy strings that were in Billie Holliday's version. Other than that it's almost note for note the original.

"We recorded it at Jam studios, which used to belong to Decca, because it's got a big live room with a nice wooden floor. But we didn't do it live. We did it just like any other record these days. Backing track, guide vocals, horns, lead vocals and icing. And it may not sound like it but there is lots of icing on that record. All sorts of little synthesizer things which you can't really hear properly. But you'd really notice it if you took them away."