Whether the Nigerian saxophonist Orlando Julius invented Afrobeat is debatable, but there’s no doubting the role he played in its development after he formed his band the Modern Aces in 1964, at the age of 21.

“We started out playing highlife,” he told Songlines in 2014. “But I was listening to American soul music like Sam & Dave and Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, and I was the first to modernise Nigerian music with rock, jazz and soul and R&B. It was my own invention and idea to develop highlife. It was like Afrobeat, but my record company named it Afro-soul. I didn’t worry as long as it had Afro in the name.”

Among those who regularly came to see him play was the young Fela Kuti, who then started his own band, Koola Lobitos, and recruited several musicians from Julius’ Modern Aces. By the time his debut album Super Afro Soul was released in 1966 Julius was already a local star, but he left Nigeria in 1974 for the US, where he recorded with Hugh Masekela and The Crusaders, among others.

He eventually returned to Nigeria in 1998 and watched with astonishment as reissues of his 1960s recordings – which had never been released outside West Africa – found a new cult following on specialist crate-digging labels. It led to a late career renaissance which found him touring internationally and recording an album with the London-based jazz collective The Heliocentrics, which mixed Afrobeat jams, Yoruba chants and updated versions of his old hits.