Hot Chocolate Co-Founder Tony Wilson Dies

BusinessHollywood & EntertainmentHot Chocolate Co-Founder Tony Wilson DiesByProf. Mike Alleyne Ph.D,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Professor Mike Alleyne Ph.D is an award-winning author and editor.Follow AuthorApr 27, 2026, 12:52pm EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.He helped take the British pop band from obscurity to international fame, and he went solo as its success peaked.British pop group Hot Chocolate posed together in April 1974. Standing, left to right: singer-songwriter Errol Brown, guitarist Harvey Hinsley, keyboard player Larry Ferguson, drummer Tony Connor, bassist and songwriter Tony Wilson and percussionist Patrick Olive. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)Hulton ArchiveTony Wilson, bassist, songwriter, and co-founder of the hit British group Hot Chocolate has died in his native Trinidad. His death was confirmed in a social media post by his daughter. Wilson co-wrote the band’s 1975 global hit single, “You Sexy Thing” that peaked at #3 in America and #2 in Britain where it also reached the top 10 in three successive decades. Hot Chocolate was the first predominantly Black British group to chart successive major hits in America at a time when Black popular music originating beyond the U.S. was largely treated as a cultural novelty. Eventually feeling stifled by the prominence of his songwriting collaborator and the group’s front man, Errol Brown (d. 2015), Wilson left Hot Chocolate in November 1975 for a solo career which never quite fulfilled its commercial promise.The Hot Chocolate EraWilson teamed up with Jamaican-born songwriter and vocalist Brown in London, and the group debuted in 1969 on The Beatles’ Apple Records label as the Hot Chocolate Band with an unsuccessful pop-reggae cover of John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.” Despite the discouraging start, the Afro-Caribbean flavored Hot Chocolate in whic...