If he had never played another note after 1977, Fred Smith would still have had a place in music history as one quarter of the band who made Marquee Moon – my favourite album of all time.

Even before that he had made his mark as the original bass guitarist in Angel And The Snake, the band that became Blondie, before  Richard he replacedHell in Television.

He had a unique style of playing melodic bass lines and counterpoint that owed as much (more?) to jazz as the rhythm and blues roots of rock, and he found the perfect partner in Television’s drummer Billy Ficca.

I’m not sure his talent for star-spotting matched his musical ability: after quitting Debbie Harry’s group in 1975 he proclaimed: “Blondie was like a sinking ship and Television was my favorite band.”

When they broke up in 1978 after making just two albums, including that landmark debut, he went on to work with both Television’s guitarists – Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd – on their solo projects.

Smith also played on albums by other artists including The Roches, The Fleshtones and The Roches, Willie Nile and Holly & The Italians, The Peregrins and The Revelons.

He rejoined the group when they reunited in 1992 to make one more eponymous album; it was a disappointing effort apart from the opening number, 1880 Or So, and this stone cold classic.

Call Mr Lee is built around one of Verlaine’s corkscrew guitar riffs – those spiralling affairs that became his trademark – with a cryptic lyric that alludes to film noir, much like the earlier Prove It, and a celestrial guitar solo from Richard Lloyd.

“We did good on an inside job,” announces Verlaine, introducing a song with a characteristically opaque chorus: “Dial 4141 000, Call Mr Lee / He’ll know the code is broken / Tell him the dog is turning red.”

I’m especially sad to read that until the illness that took his life, Smith had been preparing to tour later this year, playing the late Verlaine’s songs with his bandmate Jimmy Rip.

And I learn from Wiki that since the turn of the century Smith and his wife, artist Paula Cereghino, had moved into viticulture, making wine in their East Village apartment (!!) before establishing their own winery – Cereghino Smith – in upstate New York.

I must search for a bottle to raise a toast in his memory while watching this – the only official video Television ever made.