The Spencer Davis Group

One of the more influential bands of the British beat boom of the 1960s, The Spencer Davis Group, formed in 1963, drew strikingly on jazz, blues and soul to inject real class into the charts of the day, notably with their biggest hit, “Keep on Running”. Although the brainchild of guitarist Spencer Davis, most of the attention was focused on the unusually soulful vocals of Steve Winwood. He and his brother Muff teamed up with Davis and drummer Pete York, originally as the Rhythm & Blues Quartette. After seeing them in a club, Chris Blackwell signed them to Island Records and produced their breakthrough hit “Keep on Running”, which rocketed to Number 1 in the UK charts. They followed it with another Number 1 – “Somebody Help Me” - and had two more major hits in 1966 and 1967 with “Gimme Some Loving” and “I'm a Man” - which also established them in the USA. Later that year, however, Winwood quit to form Traffic, but collaborated with his old band on the music for the movie Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. The Spencer Davis Group recorded two more albums - With Their New Face On (1968) and Funky (1969, but unreleased until 1997) - before Davis decided to uproot and move to California. Spencer Davis died on October 20, 2020, of pneumonia. He was 81.