Rant #2,518: Keep On Running

The other day, we lost another musician who helped to define the 1960’s generation of rockers with his music.
 
Spencer Davis, the leader of his eponymous band which blended rock, pop and blues and probably most importantly, brought the world Steve Winwood, passed away at age 81 from pneumonia.
 
The Spencer Davis Group rode into our consciousness once the door for British bands was broken wide open by the Beatles, but their sound was so different than that produced by the Fab Four.
 
It was bluesy, it was smoked with a lot of fire, and a lot of that had to do with Winwood, the teenage phenomenon whose voice sounded way older than it actually was.
 
That voice propelled Spencer Davis and his cohorts to several hits in America, including “Keep On Running,” “I’m a Man,” and their biggest stateside hit, “Gimme Some Lovin’,” which hit No. 7 in  the fall of 1966.
 
And they were even more popular in England, where they had numerous hits with Winwood out front.

 
And once Winwood became too huge to be contained in this band, and he left the act, the hits stopped, and “Time Seller”—the sleeve that I posted here from my personal collection—only reached No. 100 on the charts in 1967, and that was pretty much it for the band as a chart entity in the U.S,
 
One would think that a band that is eponymously named for its founder that had a young wunderkind becoming the biggest star of the band would make the bandleader jealous of the kid’s stardom, but nothing could be further from the truth with Davis.

 
Everything that I have read about him and his feelings toward Winwood are just the opposite, that he knew who the real star of the band was, and it wasn’t the person the band was named after.
 
And I know this personally, because one of my first celebrity interviews way back when was with Davis.
 
I think that interview took place in 1988, when I was writing for the fledgling Long Island-based music publication called “The Island Ear.”
 
I was assigned to cover the opening of a performance venue called “The Saint,” which was simply the updated and newly polished off Fillmore East, which had closed several years before.
 
The venue was under new owners, who had renamed the place, and one of the first shows they had there was an oldies show with a few veteran acts including the Chambers Brothers and Spencer Davis.
 
I know I was probably pretty nervous when I got there, but once I met Davis, I wasn’t nervous anymore. He was so kind and all he wanted to do was talk, so a half hour interview turned into two hours of memories from him, and in particular about Winwood.
 
When I had heard that Davis has passed, I immediately looked for the interview, but I can’t find it. That is a real shame, because once I was backstage and Davis talked to me, I really got a great interview from him.
 
I remember my editor told me it was too long, that I had to cut it down, and I did, but what a wonderful interview it was.
 
All I said to Davis was, “Take me back 20 years ago to when you first started the Spencer Davis Group,” and he spoke almost non-stop for two hours while I could hear the Chambers Brothers practicing in the background.
 
Anyway, he told me all about the British blues scene at the time, how his band fit into that scene, and what an enormous talent Winwood was.
 
He told me something to the effect of “Look, we knew we had caught lightning in a bottle with Winwood, but he had become so big, there was no way we were going to hold him back. When the proper time came, we simply had to let him go,”  and even though that was pretty much the end of the Spencer Davis Group as a big act, Davis had absolutely no regrets about Winwood’s departure.
 
But back to Davis … he was just so nice to me, made me feel comfortable—I must have looked like a wreck—and after two hours of talking to him, my head was far from dizzy, in fact, I think it was on straighter than it had been earlier in the day.
 
And that is what I read about him as the news came through about his passing.
 
No one had a bad word to say about him, and I mean nobody.
 
In later years, he had become something of a musician that other musicians looked up to for advice and for direction, and having been there and done it all, he knew his place in the musical world, and he went with it.
 
Years later, at the old Westbury Music Fair, I saw him with a new Spencer Davis Band, and they were quite good. They had a lead singer who kind of sounded like Winwood, and they went through the requisite hits with Davis in the background, probably the most anonymous band leader of a band that had his name in the history of rock music … I mean, compare that with, let’s say, Dave Clark of the Dave Clark Five, who was out front and center with everything his band did, and you will understand what I mean.
 
So, with Davis’ death, another musical icon from my youth has left us, but this one just was so personal for me based on the two hours I spent with him more than 30 years ago.
 
It is a memory I will never forget, and when I hear “Gimme Some Lovin’” or any of the other songs they did, I still think about that interview as if it happened yesterday.
 
Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.