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Spencer Davis, during a concert, in an undated image David Warner Ellis / Redferns
Spencer Davis was not only a memorable pioneer of British
rhythm 'n' blues
.
It was also an unusual example of generosity in front of the band to which he gave his name.
An excellent guitarist and vocalist more than drinkable, this Welshman from Swansea had no problem putting Steve Winwood, a 16-year-old teenager at the head of The Spencer Davis Group, with obvious difficulties in hiding acne.
Together, the angelic-faced boy who sang loudly in black and his discreet mentor were able to triumph on both sides of the Atlantic with three of the most electrifying and imitated strokes of the British scene in the mid-sixties,
Keep on runnin '
,
Gimme some lovin '
and
I'm a man
, then also very famous in the hands of the Americans Chicago.
Davis, who was born in Swansea in 1939, died Monday in a British hospital at the age of 81, a victim of pneumonia.
Spencer and Steve's band, which also included their older brother (Muff Winwood) on bass and drummer Pete York, had set out in Birmingham in 1963, with the firm intention of transferring the
blues
teachings
of Muddy Waters or Leadbelly to the territory of the gigantic outbreak that the British scene was experiencing already behind the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
Spencer had plenty of passion and smell.
With just six springs he had learned to handle the harmonica and the accordion and in his early youth he already founded an initiatory band, The Saints, along with another boy named Bill Wyman, over time one of the finest and most circumspect members of the own Stones.
Davis eventually moved to Birmingham to study Germanic philology, but his academic interests were short-lived.
The city was not a hive like London or Liverpool, but there it coincided with the early Moody Blues, those of
Go now
(1965).
In November of that same year, under the tutelage of producer Chris Blackwell, Spencer learned to understand the potential of
Keep on runnin '
, a hardly disclosed song by Jamaican Jackie Edwards, and take it to number 1. The Negroid Throat of the Winwood Child and His Savage mastery of the Hammond organ worked the miracle, while the group's leading theorist naturally assumed a discreet background.
