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An engaging, voluble character, Luddy Samms is nonetheless modest about his 40-year career as a soul singer. This is a man who has worked with the all-time greats and, as we sit in Newington Green’s Cava Bar, he recounts his memories and experiences of life in the music business.

A Stoke Newington resident since the mid-1970s, Ludwig Samuels (his father was a Beethoven enthusiast) was born in Jamaica in 1946 and moved with his family to Houston, Texas when still a boy. He honed his silky, soulful voice in the local  Pentecostal church, his formative influences being Sam Cooke and Brooke Benton, and he developed an affinity with ‘raw, harsh-edged gospel’.

After a spell in the US military in the mid-1960s (and a tour of Vietnam, about which he is reticent) he moved to England and began singing in London’s clubs and bars. After a fallingout with his then agent, he moved to Spain for a couple of years in the late 1960s where an encounter with a young Jonathan King resulted in a Spanish Number One, ‘So Good To Be Here’.

Back in London, and now with a young family, he moved to Finsbury Park, then to a basement in Stamford Hill and finally to Shakespeare Walk, where he still lives. Since then, his distinctive vocals have taken him across Britain and Europe, singing with the Johnny Mooreera Drifters, backing Wilson Pickett (‘a nice guy but crazy’), Eddie Floyd, the Chi-Lites, Rufus Thomas (‘a great man’), Sam and Dave and the Blues Brothers amongst others. He recalls supporting James Brown in Belgium. Brown’s manager came into Luddy’s dressing room and scratched out most of his set list, saying ‘you can’t sing this, you can’t sing that’. Luddy retaliated by going on stage and singing an entire Brown set, including ‘Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag’. He never worked with the Sex Machine again.

He remembers the vitality of the Stoke Newington live music scene in the 1970s, citing such classic venues as the Pegasus on Green Lanes, the Weaver’s in Newington Green and the Three Crowns (‘man, they used to queue around the block to see me there’), now the Bar Lorca. He forged an unlikely alliance with Polly Brown (singer with Picketywitch, a 1970s ‘novelty’band, younger readers), carved out a reputation as a nonpareil interpreter of the Atlantic, Stax and Motown catalogue and became a fixture in the London soul and r&b scene.

He remembers some ten years ago singing at the famed Gaz’s Rocking Blues Club and spotting a familiar face in the front row. ‘Hi, I’m Bruce, meet Demi. Would you mind if I joined you ?’ Bruce Willis pulled out his harmonica and joined Luddy on stage for a storming blues set. Luddy, who has an endearing habit of singing a song’s first line instead of quoting it, continues to be a regular presence across the capital, although in the 1980s he disliked singing in Britain. ‘All they offered me were functions where they treated me like a piece of shit’.

He now gigs with his band Back II Basics, comprising his long-time partner Bruce Knapp, a splendid guitarist with a day job as lecturer in music at Chichester College and who has been described as ‘Britain’s answer to Steve Cropper’ (the legendary guitarist and leader of the Stax house band); a tight, four-piece brass section; Brand New Heavies keyboardist Neil Cowley; drummer Toby Barron, currently touring with Ray Davies; and bass player Johnathan Banks. The full line-up will be on stage at The Eye on 14 December.

He welcomes the arrival of The Eye but is disenchanted with the contemporary music scene in Stoke Newington. ‘They’ve closed down all the good pubs and turned them into synthetic theme bars’, he complains. Likewise, he is out of touch with contemporary music – ‘maybe I’m just locked in a cocoon’. ‘There are no singers with range and power. Direction is lacking’, he adds. Macy Gray? (‘gimmicky’), Eminem? (‘my daughter plays it and I have to listen’), although he does have time for R Kelly (‘a throwback to the 1960s’, he comments approvingly).

What next, then, for Luddy? He is a devotee (as everyone should be) of Otis Redding (‘a shy man’) and is currently preparing an album entitled An Otis Tribute. He has also written a stage play about Otis’s life – called, unsurprisingly, Mr Pitiful – and is keen to see it staged, if he can find out where it is hiding on his computer. Come on, Arcola, give it a go.

Luddy seems a man content with his life and his achievements. He picks up his copy of The Mirror – ‘I get it for the horses’ – and strolls up Albion Road, humming as he goes. Do not miss Luddy and his band at The Eye.