Spencer Davis (81) – Spencer Davis Group – was born in Swansea, South-West Wales, on 17 July 1939.
His father was a paratrooper during World War II. While his father was away, his uncle Herman was a musical influence on Davis, teaching him how to play the harmonica and accordion at age six. Davis lived through The Blitz: “The bombed city center was my playground. I watched the town being absolutely destroyed.” Davis’s mother continued to live in the West Cross area of Swansea until her death. He attended Dynevor Schoolin Swansea and became proficient speaking a few languages.
His early musical influences were skiffle, jazz, and blues. Musical artists who influenced Davis include Big Bill Broonzy, Huddy Ledbetter, Buddy Holly, Davey Graham, John Martyn, Alexis Korner, and Long John Baldry. By the time he was 16, Davis was hooked on the guitar and the American rhythm and blues music making its way across the Atlantic. With few opportunities to hear R&B in South Wales, Davis attended as many local gigs as practical.
After attending Dynevor grammar school, at 16 he went to London to work in civil service clerical jobs with the Post Office and the Customs and Excise department. He returned to school briefly in Swansea and took A-levels in languages, then in 1960 went to Birmingham University to study German. In 1960, he moved to Birmingham, to read German at the University of Birmingham. In music circles, Davis was later known as “Professor”.
When Davis moved to Birmingham as a student, he often performed on stage after his teaching day. While in Birmingham, he formed a musical and personal relationship with Christine Perfect who as Christine McVie was later a lifelong member of Fleetwood Mac.
He also polished his technique on a 12-string guitar, inspired by Lonnie Donegan’s skiffle music and by American bluesmen including Lightnin’ Hopkins, Big Bill Broonzy and Leadbelly, with some Woody Guthrie influence for good measure.
In 1963 he left university and played with the future Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman in the Saints and with the singer Christine Perfect, the future Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac, who was then studying sculpture at art college.
In 1963, Davis went to the Golden Eagle pub in Birmingham to see the Muff Wood Jazz band, a traditional jazz band featuring Muff Winwood and his younger brother, Steve Winwood. Davis persuaded them to join him and drummer Pete York as the Rhythm and Blues Quartet. Davis performed on guitar, vocals and harmonica, Steve Winwood on guitar, organ and vocals, Muff Winwood on bass and Pete York on drums. Reportedly, they adopted the name the Spencer Davis Group because Davis was the only band member who agreed to press interviews, allowing the other band members to sleep longer.
The group’s live reputation attracted the attention of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell who signed the group to its first contract and became their manager. Their first single, Dimples, released later that year, did not chart, but their luck changed spectacularly with their fourth release, Keep On Running – like Somebody Help Me, it was written by the Jamaican songwriter and fellow Island artist Jackie Edwards.
When it knocked We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper from the No 1 spot in January 1966, Davis received a congratulatory telegram from the Beatles. Davis later had a cameo as a bus passenger in the Beatles’ film Magical Mystery Tour. In 1966, the Spencer Davis Group starred in the musical comedy film The Ghost Goes Gear. In 1968, they supplied a batch of songs for Clive Donner’s swinging 60s sex comedy Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, alongside other material from Steve Winwood’s new band, Traffic.
The final 1960s version of the Spencer Davis Group featured Dee Murray on bass and Nigel Olsson on drums, who would both join Elton John’s band, and their swansong was the album Funky, recorded in 1969.
The Spencer Davis Group continued after Winwood left to form Traffic in April 1967. The group recorded two more albums before splitting up in 1969. Another version of the group with Davis and York appeared in 1973 and disbanded in late 1974. Various incarnations of the band toured in later years under Davis’s direction. Davis later said: “In peoples’ minds there was only one Spencer Davis Group, and that consisted of Steve, Muff, Peter and myself. They just didn’t allow for the possibility of another Spencer Davis Group.”
From the mid-1970s onwards, Davis lived in Avalon on Catalina Island, a small island off the coast of Southern California.
Davis recorded an acoustic album with Peter Jameson, It’s Been So Long. In 1972 he released Mousetrap, produced by Sneaky Pete Kleinow, formerly the pedal steel guitarist with the Flying Burrito Brothers, but the results were unfocused (“they try so many things that the album sounds like a compilation,” commented the AllMusic website). Soon after, he moved back to the UK, formed a new Spencer Davis Group and signed with Vertigo Records. In addition, Davis was an executive at Island Records in the mid-1970s. As a promoter for Island Records, Davis worked with Bob Marley, Robert Palmer, and Eddie and the Hot Rods as well as promoting the solo career of former Spencer Davis Group member Steve Winwood.
The eclectic Davis also involved himself in the business side of music. In 1967 he had formed Spencer Davis Management and in the 70s he took a job in artist development at Island Records, even though he believed the company had failed to pay him royalties due. “I’d sold millions of records and hadn’t seen a penny from them,” he said in 2005. There was partial recompense when he received a cheque for £5,000, earned from the Allman Brothers’ recording of his song Don’t Want You No More.
Yet the urge to reform the Spencer Davis Group still remained. The combo was reborn in 1973-74 and made two albums, Gluggo, produced by Deep Purple’s bassist Roger Glover, and then Living in a Back Street, neither of them commercially successful.
In 1984 Davis released the album Crossfire, which featured appearances by Dusty Springfield and Booker T Jones. He made numerous guest appearances with such headliners as the Grateful Dead and Hall & Oates, then formed the Classic Rock All Stars in 1993. In 1996 he upgraded this to the World Classic Rockers, which included Randy Meisner from the Eagles, Carmine Appice from Vanilla Fudge and the former Paul McCartney sideman Denny Laine.
In 2001, he began touring with a rebuilt Spencer Davis Group. In 2006 he released the album So Far, on which he looked back at his Welsh roots with songs such as The Swansea Shuffle and Uncle Herman’s Mandolin.
During the summer of 2012, the Catalina Island Museum hosted an exhibition called “Gimme Some Lovin’: The Spencer Davis Group”, to celebrate Davis’s musical career. To complement the museum show, the museum also hosted a symposium on “The British Invasion”, where Davis was joined on a panel by, among others, Micky Dolenz of the Monkees and a July Fourth concert featuring Davis singing his hits with a backing band named ‘The Catalina All Stars’.
In 2017 the Spencer Davis Group played its last dates, utilising two different lineups (both featuring Davis) for dates in Europe and the US.
Spencer Davis died from pneumonia in Los Angeles on 19 October 2020 at the age of 81.
