Spencer Davis

Spencer Davis, leader of the 1960s British band “The Spencer Davis Group,” died on Monday aged 81.

Bob Birk, Davis’s friend and tour manager who worked with him for decades, delivered the news in a statement to NPR. Birk said that he died from pneumonia and called the musician a “highly ethical, talented, good-hearted, extremely intelligent and generous man.”

The Welsh multi-instrumentalist produced many hit songs, including “Keep On Running,” “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “I’m a Man.” Davis was born on July 17, 1939, in Swansea, where he started singing in a boys’ choir. When he began college, he became interested in jazz and the blues. One day he ran into the Winwood brothers, Steve and Muff, playing songs at a local bar and asked them to join his band.

“The Spencer Davis Group” was officially formed in 1963 after Davis recruited Pete York as a drummer to form the rhythm and blues quartet. They signed their first recording contract in 1964 after Chris Blackwell and Island Records saw them performing in a local club.

Muff Winwood came up with the band’s name because Davis was the only band member who enjoyed being interviewed. “If we called it ‘ The Spencer Davis Group,’ the rest of us could stay in bed and let him do the interviews,” he once said.

Steve Winwood paid tribute to Davis’s passing in a statement released on Tuesday that credited him with embracing folk blues and rhythm and blues music. The statement labeled him an “early pioneer of the British folk scene,” adding: “He was definitely a man with a vision, and one of the pioneers of the British invasion in the 1960s.”