The best-known member of Hot Chocolate was Errol Brown, the frontman with the unforgettable voice and the even more unforgettable chest hair. But in the engine room, co-writing their hit songs and playing bass, was Tony Wilson, who has died aged 89.
Wilson set up Hot Chocolate with Brown in London in 1968, and together they wrote You Sexy Thing, Love is Life, Brother Louie and Emma - all Top 10 UK singles in the early 1970s. He also contributed to the band's first three albums, because apparently one hit per decade wasn't enough.
The pair met in the late '60s as young men, both having arrived in the UK from the Caribbean several years before - Wilson from Trinidad, Brown from Jamaica. Brown was new to songwriting, but Wilson, older by seven years and far more experienced, encouraged the younger man to develop his talent. This is the musical equivalent of a veteran chef teaching an apprentice how to make a perfect omelette, only for the apprentice to become the face of the restaurant chain.
Their collaborations produced a string of soulful pop tunes that made Hot Chocolate one of the most successful British singles bands of the '70s, beginning with Love is Life in 1970 and peaking with You Sexy Thing in 1975 - a No. 2 hit that achieved the rare feat of charting in the Top 10 across three different decades, proving that some songs are just too catchy to die.
Initially sharing singing as well as songwriting duties, Wilson eventually became disenchanted with the fact that Brown was pushed to the foreground, and he quit the band in 1975 to pursue a solo career in the US. It's a classic tale: the bassist who does all the work, the frontman who gets all the glory, and the inevitable departure to seek artistic fulfillment elsewhere.
One of the four children of Gladys (née Hernandez), a french polisher, and her husband, Wilfred Wilson, Tony was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He attended two secondary schools - Tranquillity Boys and Belmont Modern - where he showed more interest in sport than music. Fortunately for music lovers, he eventually came around.
He became a fan of American soul, and after moving to the UK in 1961 at age 25, he got involved in the London music scene, releasing two solo singles: Yes I Do (1964) and What Did I Do? (1967). The first was in the prevailing English pop style; the second had a more soulful R&B vibe. Not long after the second record, he bumped into Brown in West Hampstead, northwest London, where they had been living opposite each other - a meet-cute that would change the course of British pop.
Hot Chocolate formed after the pair began working on a version of John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance. According to Wilson, they went to the Apple offices in London with a demo and ended up playing it in person to Lennon and Yoko Ono, who were impressed. When Lennon discovered they had no name for their project, a receptionist, Mavis Smith, came up with Hot Chocolate Band. The song deservedly sank without trace, but the first two parts of the name stuck. Wilson and Brown went on to recruit Patrick Olive on percussion, Franklyn De Allie on guitar and Jim King on drums, before signing to Mickie Most's RAK label.
Some of the early Wilson/Brown compositions were used by Most for other artists - Bet Yer Life I Do for Herman's Hermits, Heaven Is Here for Julie Felix, and Think About Your Children for Mary Hopkin, all in 1970. But that same year, Hot Chocolate released their debut single, Love is Life, which hit No. 6 on the UK charts. I Believe in Love reached No. 8 in 1971, while Brother Louie - about the trials of an interracial love affair and featuring a memorable Wilson bass line - peaked at No. 7 in 1973 and became a US No. 1 when the Stories covered it.
Emma, a dark tale, reached No. 3 in 1974, while You Sexy Thing would almost certainly have gone higher than No. 2 the following year if it hadn't been blocked by Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody - one of the biggest-selling singles of all time, because of course it was. It hit No. 3 in the US, re-emerged as a Top 10 hit in the UK with a remix in 1987, and again in 1997 after featuring in The Full Monty. Some songs just refuse to go away, and we're glad for it.
Wilson had taken singing duties on some of Hot Chocolate's early releases, but by the time of You Sexy Thing, the record label had consciously begun to project Brown as the band leader. "Everybody thought that Tony had the better voice, and he was certainly better at hitting the notes and had a better range," conceded Brown. "However, Mickie Most felt that I should become the lead singer because I had the more commercial voice." The resulting tension fractured their songwriting partnership, leading to Wilson's departure in 1975.
Flush with royalties, Wilson embarked on a solo career with two soul/disco albums, I Like Your Style (1976) and Catch One (1979), neither of which had any commercial success. Both LPs, along with a clutch of singles, were released on the American label Bearsville Records, based in the picturesque town of Bearsville, New York, where Wilson relocated. While there, he also wrote Everyone Can Rock and Roll for Bill Haley, which became the featured track on the rocker's 1979 album of the same name - his last ever. In 1980, Wilson came up with the raunchy, soca-tinged single Use My Body for Trinidadian singer Mavis John, which proved popular in the Caribbean and found a new life years later when featured in two American TV series, High Maintenance and High Fidelity.
A third and final solo album, Walking the Highwire, came out in 1988, but by then, having moved back to Trinidad, Wilson was mostly focusing on nurturing and recording musical talent from the island of his birth. He is survived by his partner, Dalia; three children, Joanne, Robert and Danny; and four grandchildren, Jake, Mia, Hope and Ellie-May.