If he had never written another song, Chip Taylor would have earned a place in the pantheon of rock history as the writer of Wild Thing.

But there was so much more to him than that, including another huge hit single, Angel Of The Morning, and a prolific solo career as well as – my favourite period – being half a duo with the Mexican singer and fiddler Carrie Rodriguez.

One of those classic old/young combinations that always work so well, you might have called them Beauty and the Beast were it not for Taylor’s silver fox good looks even in his 60s – he was the brother of Jon Voight and uncle of Angelina Jolie.

Uncle Wes almost went down the same path as them, after abandoning his first dream of becoming a professional golfer like his dad, but music called to him: he wrote his first song at 12 and formed his first band (Wes Voight & The Town Three) when he was 16, touring with Neil Sedaka.

After sending some songs to Chet Atkins in Nashville – and having them recorded – he spent a decade at the Brill Building’s songwriting factory in his home town of New York.

He made his own recording debut in 1957 on Syd Nathan’s King Records, which launched the career of James Brown, but failed to find success even after they changed his name to Chip Taylor – much to the relief of radio DJs who struggled to pronounce ‘Voight.’

Not that he was on skid row. In addition to his songwriting, he was earning a tidy living as a professional gambler and became so successful on the ponies that he was banned by bookies across America.

He got around it by placing his bets through the notorious Vegas mobster Meyer Lansky – who, he later discovered when presented with a case of champagne by one of his cronies, earned ten times more by betting ten times more (with different bookies) on each of his tips.

In between counting his winnings, Chip somehow found time at the age of 25 to compose Wild Thing, commissioned by the manager of a band called The Wild Ones to write them a song in 24 hours. He did it while looking out of the window thinking about girls he had known, and went straight into the studio to make a demo.

It flopped for The Wild Ones but six months later became a chart topper on both sides of the Atlantic for for The Troggs, which must have added handsomely to his pile of chips, and became the centrepiece of Jimi Hendrix’s live set.

His songs were recorded by Frank Sinatra and Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone and Willie Nelson, Janis Joplin and Linda Ronstadt – and, much more recently, Spiritualized (an old R&B hit by Evie Sands called Any Way That You Want Me that The Troggs and Walter Jackson Jr also had a hit with).

His song Angel Of The Morning was a hit four times over by different artists – Merrilee Rush, P.P. Arnold, Juice Newton and Shaggy (680 million views and counting!) over a 33-year period, was covered in Spectoresque style by The Pretenders, and appeared in several films, including his niece’s Oscar-winning turn in Girl, Interrupted.

He even appeared in one himself, a small role in the excellent Melvin And Howard in 1980, but spent the next 15 years haunting the blackjack tables of numerous casinos until he was banned for his card-counting technique.

In the mid-’90s he quit gambling, launched a recovery programme for fellow addicts, and a record label for his country-pop solo releases. But for me his best records were the ones he made just after the turn of the century with Carrie Rodriguez.