In The 1970s Hot Chocolate

UPDATE

Errol Brown died in May 2015 in Barbados at the age of only 71from liver cancer and was originally from Jamaica. He was also an MBE.

He may have taken the Seventies music world by storm, but Brown was an accidental musician and only got caught up in hitmaker Mickie Most’s pop production line through a friend, Hot Chocolate co-founder Tony Wilson.

“Tony had been a songwriter for 10 years, but I used to get these melodies coming into my head,” he says. “I never grew up wanting to be a pop star, I never grew up interested in performing music at all.”

A statement from Brown's manager .

"Errol Brown MBE passed away in The Bahamas this morning with his wife Ginette and daughters Colette and Leonie by his side of liver cancer," he said.

"Errol was a lover of life and obviously 'music!' I never went into his home, car or a hotel room without music playing.

"Errol was a 'Gentle Man' and was a personal friend of mine who will be sadly missed by everyone who knew him," Phil Dale continued.

"His greatest legacy is that his music will live on!"

Fellow artists including Chic's Nile Rodgers have paid tribute on Twitter.

Rodgers wrote: "We had some good times back in the day. #ErrolBrown RIP".

Singer Beverley Knight tweeted: "I am so gutted. Errol Brown was such a charismatic performer."

These boys were so successful it is easy, therefore to forget that they were a British group. Hot Chocolate  were once named Hot Chocolate Band but pop guru Mickie Most took the word "band" off. In 1970 the voice of Errol Brown began to be heard in the charts.

Errol Brown was born in Jamaica in 1948 and is now an MBE and an Ivor Novello winner too and who sang lead on the first top ten single Love Is Life .on the RAK label. In 1971 two more hits arrived, the first being You Could Have Been A Lady which just missed the top twenty, the second was I Believe (In Love) which made No. 8 in the UK BBC charts.

1972 the group went off the boil with no top twenty hits, but in 1973 they had a huge hit with Brother Louie which was bout racial love and even the word "spooks" is used in the lyrics. The song had a real American feel about it and some of the spoken words were narrated by Alexis Corner the white blues musician and Radio One presenter who died in 1984.

The song was a hit six months later in the U.S. by another group.

    

1974 and a change of direction with a beautiful ballad song called Emma which went to No.3 and went silver in the UK. The song tell the story of a girl from five to seventeen and her eventual suicide.

 

Now the year is 1975 and in the 70s disco music is making its way through the charts. So of course it would only be proper that the group have their disco hit with Disco Queen . The follow up was A Child's Prayer, which had no sign of disco whatsoever.

But it was 1976 when the group came up with that song. The song was like most other Hot Chocolate songs and was written by Errol Brown himself and was originally only a B side. The song of course was You Sexy Thing. Lead singer Errol Brown wrote this about his wife Ginette.

  

1976 and a No. 11 hit with Don't Stop It Now followed by Man To Man.

1977 the group had their first No. 1 with So You Win Again written by Russ Ballard of Argent fame and achieved  Silver in sales in the UK.

Just to admit one mistake
That can be hard to take
I know we've made them fall
But only fools come back for more

Being the fool I am
I figured in all your plans, darling
Your perfumed letters didn't say
That you'd be leaving any day

    

 This was followed by a great song to along the same lines as the previous single. Put Your Love In Me was a beautiful song for the group and went silver.

1978 and the group had their first gold single with a song that only got to No. 12 in the UK charts. The song was Every 1s A Winner and Errol Brown told the Mail On Sunday January 25, 2009 that the band's producer Mickie Most suggested the song's title. He added: "I was getting nowhere with it when I heard my eldest daughter crying in a particular rhythm and used that for the melody."

The last top twenty hit in the 1970s for the group came wit the next single which reached No. 13. The song was I'll Put You Together Again.

The group still continued to have big hits in the 1980s and in total scored 22 top twenty hits up to the year 2000.

Here is a clip of Erroll on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgifofdUvQATHIS IS YOUR LIFE from 1997.