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Born on May 12, 1948, Stevie Winwood was just 15 when he joined The Spencer Davis Group in 1963 – the line-up led by guitarist Davis completed by Stevie’s brother Muff on bass and drummer Peter York. Despite the group’s moniker it was always Stevie who was the main draw. His expressive, soulful vocal tones – rivalled only by the Small Faces’ Stevie Marriott – pinned to his bluesy guitar playing and Hammond organ grooves displaced the R&B sounds of Chicago and Detroit to his native Birmingham.
Albums were all about the bright lights, big city; 1965’s Their First Album went Top 10 and mixed excitable, accomplished covers of John Lee Hooker’s ‘Dimples’, The Righteous Brothers’ ‘My Babe’, Brenda Holloway’s ‘Every Little Bit Hurts’ and The Soul Sisters’ ‘I Can’t Stand It’ with competent Winwood originals such as ‘Here Right Now’ and ‘It Hurts Me So’. Their 1966 sophomore, The Second Album, was equally exhilarating and hit Number 2 in the UK. It contained their first Number 1 single, the superlative Jackie Edwards penned ‘Keep On Running’, the first of a string of successful sevens in the UK that included 1966 Number 1 ‘Somebody Help Me’ and Number 2 ‘Gimme Some Lovin’ plus 1967’s Top Ten ‘I’m A Man’. Stevie hung around with the SDG for just one further album ‘Autumn 66’, another Top 5 smash, that also beat its rhythm to the blues and contained heart warming readings of Don Covay’s ‘Take This Hurt Off Me’, Percy Sledge’s ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ and Elmore James’ ‘Dust My Blues’.
As Winwood’s first group had looked to the US R&B sound for inspiration, Traffic, his second, defined the very concept of what it meant to be an English hippy in the late-’60s. Taking up in a cottage in the Berkshire countryside, the four-piece – Winwood with guitarist Dave Mason, drummer Jim Capaldi and multi-instrumentalist Chris Wood – quickly proved masters of stunning soulful psychedelia creating 1967’s inaugural single ‘Paper Sun’ and follow up ‘Hole In My Shoe’ (both went UK Top 5) and the same year’s Jimmy Miller produced ‘Mr Fantasy’ album which went UK Top 10. Their 1968 arcadian self titled second, again with Miller and another UK Top 10 hit, built on their first, seamlessly melding jazz, psych, folk and soul textures into something at equal turns light, dark, heavy, emotional. Internecine rivalry (Mason left after the debut, came back, then left just after this) meant everyone peaked; Mason with ‘Feelin’ Alright’ and ‘You Can All Join In’, Winwood and Capaldi with ‘Pearly Queen’ and ‘40,000 Headmen’. Following Mason’s departure Winwood formed the supergroup Blind Faith with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Ric Grech recording their 1969 sole self-titled LP. Winwood then tried his hand alone. His first attempt to record a solo record with producer Guy Stevens ended up as Traffic’s first as a reconfigured three piece though – after two tracks (‘Stranger To Himself’ and ‘Every Mother’s Son’) Winwood drafted in Wood and Capaldi and Stevens left to be replaced by Chris Blackwell as co-producer. The result 1970’s ‘John Barleycorn Must Die’, a UK Number 5 hit and their biggest in the US to date peaking at Number 11, was a glorious melange of folk, jazz and prog with hints of Bert Jansch and Fairport Convention. After live album ‘Welcome To The Canteen’, recorded at the Fairfield Hall, Croydon and The Oz Benefit in London in 1971, an expanded Traffic line up featuring Ric Grech, Reebop Kwaku-Baah (congas) and Derek And The Dominoes’ drummer Jim Gordon (all who had featured alongside Mason on Welcome) went into the studio to record 1971’s ‘The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys’. Produced by Winwood, it mixed lyrical depth with consummate musicianship and revealed a group still with much to offer. It also signalled the group’s rise in the US being the first of three Top 10 LPs for the group there.
By 1973’s Winwood/Capaldi produced ‘Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory’, Grech and Gordon had flown, replaced by Muscle Shoals Sound Studio band members Roger Hawkins on drums and bassist David Hood who in turn by Traffic’s swansong 1974’s ‘When The Eagle Flies’ had also left, and while the group – core members Winwood, Capaldi and Wood plus bassist Rosko Gee – saw their effort hit the Top 10 in the States, they nevertheless went their separate ways.
As a solo artist from 1976 onwards Winwood has melded blue eyed soul with adroit pop. His tentative first outing, 1977’s Top 20 eponymous debut featured bassist Willie Weeks, drummer Andy Newmark and Reebop Kwaku Banu and is most notable for its four Jim Capaldi co-writes including the single ‘Time Is Running Out’, a poetic environmental warning. It is his second 1980’s ‘Arc Of A Diver’ that marks his brand new start, however, as renaissance man – he writes, sings, plays all the instruments and produces the album – traversing the decades with a mix of the organic and synthetic; the former courtesy of his vocal delivery, as passionate and soulful as it was back in SDG and Traffic on effusive numbers such as the Will Jennings co-pen ‘While You See A Chance’. The platinum selling album, another Top 20 hit in the UK, went Top 3 in the States. The follow up 1982’s ebullient ‘Talking Back To The Night’, co-authored with Will Jennings, arrived a year later. A Number 6 hit in the UK it spawned the infuriatingly catchy single ‘Valerie’ which, nevertheless, stalled outside the Top 50. That made Winwood rethink. Leaving his Gloucestershire home studio, Winwood moved between New York’s Unique Recording Studio, Right Track Recording, Power Station and Giant Sound, hired co-producer Russ Titelman and recruited Nile Rodgers, James Taylor, Joe Walsh and more to help. The result 1986’s highly buffed ‘Back In The High Life’ spawned the single ‘Higher Love’, which featured Chaka Khan, and secured his first US solo top spot and a Grammy for Record Of The Year. The album, meanwhile, went Top 10 both sides of the Atlantic. With a label jump from Island to Virgin, 1988’s ‘Roll With It’ featured the Memphis Horns and notched up his second US Number 1 single with the title track. He fared less well in the next decade with 1990’s ‘Refugees Of The Heart’ which saw Winwood reunite with Capaldi on the track ‘One And Only Man’ – they subsequently went on to reform Traffic in 1994 releasing the ‘Far From Home’ album – and 1997’s ‘Junction Seven’. But come the new millennium and Winwood with 2003’s superb ‘About Time’ and 2008’s ‘Nine Lives’ is clearly back on the right track.
