If this introductory piece turns up in more than two separate locations, it’ll be because Hughesy has managed to find what look like more than two expressions of the same we’ve got this thing going, let’s see where it leads us impulse.
The Argumentative Reader might think I’m stretching things a bit when I seem to be lumping Pink Floyd and Traffic under the same umbrella, but it all comes back to a common origin in a guitar and organ based R&B combo with a remarkable front man.
One could probably make a case for shifting Jethro Tull under the same umbrella, although the original quartet tended towards blues rather than R&B and didn’t feature keyboards. Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond was an associate who was slotted into the lineup a little further down the track.
In Traffic’s case, the origins lay in a quartet called the Spencer Davis Group where the remarkable front man wasn’t Spencer Davis, but the quite remarkable Steve (or, at this point, Stevie) Winwood.
The Welsh-born Davis had ended up in Birmingham via London, where he’d played skiffle and developed an interest in the blues. He worked as a teacher by day, gigging in blues clubs in the evenings, had a duo going with a young Christine Perfect (later McVie, of Fleetwood Mac) and ended up forming the Rhythm and Blues Quartette with the Winwood brothers and drummer Pete York.
Steve Winwood had internalised his Ray Charles influences rather well, and the group built up a reputation as a live act, which in turn attracted record label interest, particularly from Island Records entrepreneur Chris Blackwell. Signed to Island Records in 1964, the Rhythm and Blues Quartette became the Spencer Davis Group, according to Muff Winwood because Davis enjoyed doing the interviews so he might as well be the front man while the rest of the band stayed in bed.
They’d hit the big time with Keep on Running, and followed it with I'm a Man and Gimme Some Lovin', with the latter delivering a prime slice of Hammond-drenched soul demand that would have kept a packed dance floor moving.
There were, however, issues, and while they were hitting the big time the group started to splinter as Winwood ended up spending more and more time with the collection of mates from Birmingham groups who coalesced around the country cottage on the Berkshire Downs Stevie had acquired for the equivalent of a peppercorn rent.