ACCORDING to the Guinness Who’s Who of Seventies Music, Jim Capaldi “has an affectionate rather than an important place in musical history”, but this estimation underplays the huge volume of records to which he contributed.

About 25 million copies of songs either written or co-written by Capaldi were sold during a music career that spanned four decades. This achievement helped him to win five music industry awards for the most played songs in America.

As a member of Traffic and then as a solo artist, he helped to create an accessible psychedelic rock and experimented with sounds that would lay the foundations of prog-rock. He later worked with some of the most influential names in the business, including Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Bob Marley, Carlos Santana and the Eagles.

Nicola James Capaldi was born in Evesham, Worcestershire, of second-generation Italian immigrants. His father, Nick, was a talented accordionist and a music teacher, who in his youth had performed a regular show on Radio Luxembourg. His mother sang and recorded with a touring troupe. Both parents encouraged him to play the piano and study music as a child, but his real interest lay in the drums.

At 14 he put together his first band, and found early success as drummer with the Hellions, who won a recording deal with Pye. Unsatisfied, Capaldi moved on to form Deep Feeling with the multi-talented Dave Mason and Poli Palmer, who would go on to join Family in 1969.

Deep Feeling stuck mainly to blues and soft rock, but were influenced by the new sounds being played at the Elbow Room, Birmingham, a melting pot of ideas and musical intrigue. After performances, Capaldi would arrange to jam with other, very different bands. He met Steve Winwood of the Spencer Davis Group, and with Mason they conceived a new, far more adventurous band.

Traffic was launched in 1967, and early the following year put out the album Mr Fantasy, born of their decision to live in a Berkshire cottage as a creative, communal cell. The debut perfectly recalls the Summer of Love’s dying embers. Its US release also carried their first hit single, Paper Sun, a song of unrestrained, unabashed optimism — an emotion, sadly, that did not always characterise the group’s relationships. The second single, Hole in My Shoe, almost reached No 1, but Mason and the record executives were much more fond of it than Capaldi or Winwood. While Capaldi, Winwood and Chris Wood enjoyed writing collectively, Mason had little truck with communal creativity. By the time Mr Fantasy had been released, the others had ejected Mason, who had contributed sitar, tambura, shakkai and two of the album’s quirkier songs. They struggled without him; he would return only to be sacked again in 1968. The band argued, dissolved and reformed over a tempestuous seven years in which, against all odds, they produced ten albums and enjoyed multiplatinum success.

Flying in the face of the times, Traffic kept the guitars low and turned up Winwood’s organ, while experimenting with reed instruments played by Wood. It moved through psychedelia to folk pop to jazz rock, seemingly looking for a niche to settle in. Traffic finally petered out in 1974.

Two years earlier, Capaldi had travelled with his friend Bob Marley as he worked on the songs for his debut, Catch a Fire — a trip that would inform his 1977 lyrics for Rico’s This Is Reggae Music. More importantly, he had used the time to create a solo album, Oh How We Danced, which managed respectable US sales. He felt confident enough to release Short Cut Draw Blood, featuring Rico, from which It’s All Up to You and a version of Boudleux Bryant’s Love Hurts became hit singles. In 1976 he toured with a new band, the Space Cadets, but had little success. He continued to contribute to Winwood’s solo work until he moved to Brazil with his wife. There they worked together for Jubilee, a charity for street children.

Traffic eventually re-formed for a five-month tour in 1993-94, headlining at 75 shows and playing to more than half a million people. They released an album, Far from Home, appeared at Woodstock and played ten shows with the Grateful Dead. In 1998 Capaldi worked on another reunion project, this time with Traffic’s old firebrand, Mason.

Traffic were inducted into America’s Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame in March last year, five months before Capaldi was found to have terminal cancer. He is survived by his wife Aninha, whom he married in 1975, and by his two daughters.

Jim Capaldi, rock musician and songwriter, was born on August 24, 1944. He died of stomach cancer on January 28, 2005, aged 60.