Dobie Gray’s stomper Out On The Floor has been called the best Northern Soul record of all time, though I remember Dobie Gray for two other songs – Drift Away and The In-Crowd.

First released in that World Cup-winning summer of 1966, it wasn’t a hit at the time but is now arguably the single biggest and most acclaimed Northern Soul record of all time​.

Gray was a versatile vocalist, equally at home singing soul, country, and pop – even musical theatre – who grew up in a family of Texas sharecroppers and discovered gospel music through his grandfather, a Baptist minister.

His origins are sketchy: different sources cite his birth name as Leonard Ainsworth and Laurence Brown and his birth date as 1940, 1942 or 1943. Whichever it was, in the early ’60s he moved to Los Angeles to seek his fortune.

Before adopting the name Dobie Gray, he recorded under various names (Leonard Ainsworth, Larry Curtis, and Larry Dennis) and had a hit with his seventh single, Look At Me, in 1963.

His big breakout was a 1965 recording of The ‘In’ Crowd, bringing a Motown bounce to a song that had been a big hit for jazzman Ramsey Lewis and hitting the Top 20.

Out On The Floor, recorded the following year, was not a hit but became a dancefloor favourite when it was rediscovered by the UK’s thriving Northern Soul scene.

Nick Hornby described it as “The national anthem of Northern” in his book Juliet, Naked.

After those early hits Gray pursued a parallel career in acting, spending two and a half years in the LA production of Hair and singing with a band called Pollution, who made two albums in the early ’70s, including songs like Do You Really Have A Heart?

He resurfaced as a solo artist in 1972 and had his biggest hit with Drift Away. His next single, Loving Arms, grew into something of a standard and Gray made an album in Nashville, writing songs for country stars including George Jones, John Denver, Charley Pride and Don Williams.

Around this time he also travelled to South Africa and – remarkably for a black man – managed to talk the authorities into letting him play to integrated audiences during the apartheid era.

His final hit came in 1978 with the disco-flavoured You Can Do It before he focused again on his songwriting, re-emerging in the mid-’80s as a fully-fledged country singer, but syrupy ballads like That’s One To Grow On and From Where I Stand failed to bring more hits.