William Charles Disley was born, to Welsh parents then overseas for work, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. When he was four, his parents moved back to Llandyssil in Montgomeryshire in Wales and then five years later to Ingleton, North Yorkshire, England, where his mother worked as schoolteacher. In his childhood, he learned to play the banjo but took up jazz guitar at the age of 15 after being exposed to the playing of Django Reinhardt via a neighbour, Norry Greenwood. As Disley recalled, Greenwood taught him the chords to "Miss Annabel Lee" and "Try a Little Tenderness" in the summer of 1946.