Following the death of blues rocker Spencer Davis on Monday, Steve Winwood has paid tribute to his former bandmate, who he called a “big brother.”
Winwood noted that Davis is nine years older than him, and that they met when Winwood was just 13. “I was playing a show at Birmingham University with my brother and his band,” he said, referring to Muff Winwood, who became the bass player in the Spencer Davis Group.
“I’ve known Spencer since I was about 13, he would have been about 22,” Winwood tells Rolling Stone. “I was playing a show at Birmingham University with my brother and his band, Spencer who was a student at Birmingham, was playing with a small group of musicians, we met and the the seeds of Spencer Davis Group were sown.”
“Spencer was an early pioneer of the British folk scene, which, in his case embraced folk blues, and eventually what was then called ‘rhythm and blues,'” he adds. “He influenced my tastes in music, and he owned the first 12-string guitar I ever saw. He was taken with the music of Huddie ‘Lead belly’ Ledbetter and Big Bill Broonzy. I’d already got a big brother who influenced me greatly, and Spencer became like a big brother to me at the time.”
Spencer was an early pioneer of the British folk scene… He influenced my tastes in music, and he owned the first 12-string guitar I ever saw. I’d already got a big brother who influenced me greatly, and Spencer became like a big brother to me at the time.”
