The instantly catchy Fade Away was a sad premonition of the career of Junior Byles, who sang what remains one of my favourite reggae tunes of all time.

This is a tune I’ve had running around my brain since it came out in 1975 but I’d completely forgotten about until one day last summer when I encountered a dude on a bicycle with a big boom box on the back, cycling erratically up my street.

The sweet sound of the song took me straight back in time, as sounds and smells often do, and I found myself walking after him – not too difficult as he wove around wreathed in an aromatic scent – until the title of the tune came back to me.

I love the one-finger, two-note piano motif on which the song is built, the loping riddim and Byles’s smoky, yearning vocal. A former fireman, he was a big star in Jamaica, coming to fame first as a protege of Joe Gibbs and Lee Perry, but this was produced by the lesser known Jo Jo Hookims.

Its success in the UK, where it spread like wildfire, brought him international recognition. But he was prone to depression and, being a devout Rastafarian, the death of Haile Selassie in late 1975 affected him deeply.

He suffered a breakdown, was institutionalised for a period, and his fragile mental state was further damaged by the losses of his mother, his house – in a fire – and the emigration to the USA of his wife and children, leaving him penniless and homeless by the late Eighties.

He’s still alive though, aged 71, and his Seventies recordings are well worth investigating – a treasure trove of classic conscious reggae, of which this is the pinnacle.