DESPITE the fine weather forecast, a dark cloud hung heavy over Mark Ronson’s gig at the Greenwich Summer Sessions festival on Wednesday night.

The producer and DJ, who artists eager to have their cool credentials rubber stamped are falling over themselves to work with, has had a difficult week.

Just the day before his performance at the intimate open-air event in the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College he attended the funeral of his friend and long-time collaborator Amy Winehouse.

While the gig was intended to promote his band The Business Intl, it turned into an unofficial memorial concert for the troubled singer who was found dead in her Camden home last Saturday.

But what could have been a rather morbid Wednesday turned out to be a foot stomping celebration of pop music.

Dressed head to toe in black and sporting a pair of matching shades, Ronson opened with an acoustic duet of the chart-storming Winehouse hit Valerie with The Zutons frontman Dave McCabe, who wrote it.

It was one of four moving tributes to the late artist, with Ronson ending his DJ set with Winehouse’s Rehab and joined by Charlie Waller from The Rumble Strips to cover Back To Black.

For the finale, Winehouse’s former backing singers Zalon Thompson and Ade Omotayo, her bass player Dale Davis and drummer Troy Miller performed Valerie again, with the audience gleefully singing along.

But the emotional Ronson didn’t allow his grief to cast too long a shadow over the rest of the gig, with The View frontman Kyle Falconer lifting the mood singing wymsical hit The Bike Song and rapper Q-Tip getting the crowd jumping with the 2003 floorfiller Ooh Wee.

Rose Elinor Dougall from The Pipettes also did a good job standing in for Lily Allen to sing the Kaiser Chiefs cover Oh My God, slowed right down with a dirty edge to it, while Alex Greenwald took centre stage to perform Radiohead’s Just and the sun-kissed California - a song so anthemic it was used as the theme tune to American teen drama The OC.

Judging by the evening’s conveyor belt of covers, performed by a list of who’s who in the indie/hip hop scene, it would be easy to dismiss Ronson as nothing more than a baby-faced plagiarist.

But as the infectious Bang Bang Bang, featuring Amanda Warner from MNDR and Q-Tip, goes to show, his ability to consistently produce music which happily crawls inside your head and impel your every muscle to move to the beat deserves a round of ear-piercing cheers and applause.

And that’s exactly what he got in Greenwich.

Greenwich Summer Sessions continues at the Old Royal Naval College until Sunday, with concerts from Status Quo, Squeeze and The Pogues. To book, visit greenwichsummersessions.co.uk