Spencer Davis, ’60s rock icon, dead at 81
Spencer Davis, the veteran British rocker whose 1960s beat band featuring a teenaged Steve Winwood spawned the transatlantic megahit “Gimme Some Lovin’,” has died. He was 81.
The guitarist died Monday while being treated for pneumonia in a Los Angeles hospital, his agent told the Daily News.
Winwood paid tribute in a memorial statement that called Davis “one of the pioneers of the British invasion of America in the sixties.”
“Spencer became like a big brother to me,” Winwood said.
Davis co-founded The Spencer Davis Group in 1963 with a 14year-old Winwood and older sibling Muff Winwood after seeing the brothers perform at a Birmingham pub.
They had their first No. 1 single with “Keep on Running” in 1965 and released the blues rock classic “I’m a Man” before Winwood left the group in 1967 to form Traffic.
The Spencer Davis Group’s smash hits featured Winwood on vocals, but the band was named after Davis because he was the one who “enjoyed doing interviews,” Muff Winwood told Mojo in 1997.
“He influenced my tastes in music, he owned the first 12string guitar I ever saw,” Steve Winwood said Tuesday. “I feel that he was influential in setting me on the road to becoming a professional musician, and I thank him for that.”
Davis continued performing after both Winwood brothers departed his eponymous band, reforming the Spencer Davis Group in the 1970s and touring as recently as 2017.
He also worked as an A&R executive at Island Records in the mid-1970s, promoting the likes of Bob Marley, Robert Palmer and Steve Winwood in his solo career.
He said the U.S. group last played together a few years ago on a cruise out of Fort Lauderdale that visited Jamaica.
Davis was born in Swansea, a city on the southern coast of Wales, in 1939 and started playing the accordion and harmonica at the age of 6.
He moved to Birmingham at 16 and formed a band called The Saints with Bill Wyman, who later became the bassist for the Rolling Stones.
He also performed with Christine Perfect, also known as Christine McVie, who went on to join Fleetwood Mac.
“Gimme Some Lovin’” — which Davis wrote with the Winwood brothers — has been covered countless times, including on the soundtrack for the 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers” starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.
Davis is survived by his longtime domestic partner June Dante and three adult children, his agent of the last 35 years, Bob Birk, told The News.