I don’t know where I was in 1974… I mean, I do, but I was listening to Bowie and T.Rex, Slade and The Sweet. So I had never encountered William DeVaughn.

and, if truth be told, I had never heard of him since, until he popped up on YouTube’s autoplay function after a Marvin Gaye track just now.

Such is their similarity (and my lack of concentration, let alone knowledge of vintage soul) that I initially thought it must be another track by Marvin, or something by Curtis Mayfield. In fact, everybody thought it was Curtis Mayfield when it came out.

But no, it’s William DeVaughn, who must go down as a one-hit wonder since this, his best-known (and arguably only known) song reached the dizzy heights of No.31 in the UK (and No.44 on its re-release in 1980).

To be fair, it reached No.4 in America too, but the first time I heard the song was when Massive Attack covered it on their 1991 debut album Blue Lines, sung by Tony Bryan.

I had no idea ’til now that it was a cover version. DeVaughn, a Jehovah’s Witness, was working as a draughtsman for the US government in Washington D.C., when he wrote the song under the original title A Cadillac Don’t Come Easy.

Under a slightly dodgy-sounding vanity recording arrangement whereby hopeful amateurs paid for studio time in the hope of becoming stars, he paid $900 out of his own pocket to record it at Philadelphia’s legendary Sound Studio.

In this case it proved a good investment, as his demo tape was considered promising enough to be released as a single. Even the hefty $900 fee was not so high considering DeVaughn was able to use musicians from the legendary MFSB group for his session — guitarists Bobby Eli and Norman Harris, drummer Earl Young, bassist Ronnie Baker, vibist Vince Montana and conga player Larry Washington, as well as Allan Felder, who developed the separate ad lib back-up chorus with his sister’s vocal choir.

Released in 1974, the single sold nearly two million copies after being edited down from its full length for radio stations, into a four-minute vocal version and a mostly instrumental flipside – here joined back together into one seven-minute mix, featuring its memorable, if meaningless, refrain: “Diamond in the back, sunroof top, diggin’ the scene, with a gangsta lean”.

DeVaughn went on to make a gospel-flavoured album, featuring several self-penned songs about the glory of God, and toured for a while where his live shows would find him alternating his Christian ballads with preaching fire-and-brimstone sermons from the stage.

Perhaps in line with the lyric of his solitary hit, he quickly lost interest in his accidental pop career and went back to being a draughtsman.