The Spencer Davis Group: "Gimme Some Lovin'"

March 4, 1967 (1 week)

Until the internet and the rise of file sharing, downloading and streaming there often seemed to be a considerable gap between the release of a single on one side of the Atlantic and the other. This could be especially pronounced when releases went from the UK over to North America. Homegrown talent could have a single out and if BBC Radio 1 DJ's liked it and gave it sufficient support then they might have a hit within a couple months but establishing themselves on the other side of the pond was an altogether different beast. Releases could be delayed for various reasons and then there was the snail's pace of the Hot 100: while there's nothing wrong per se in a record taking its time moving up the chart, bands could be in entirely different place by the time their latest single managed to reach its peak. In some instances, this just might mean that the band would have moved on creatively; in the case of The Spencer Davis Group, it ensured that their belated North American chart success didn't come until they were all but broken up.

Guitarist Spencer Davis formed the band that would end up being named after himself in 1963 when he saw brothers Muff and Steve Winwood playing a gig in Birmingham. Muff was just twenty but he was a gruff old vet compared to Steve who was only fourteen-years-old at the time. Completing the lineup was drummer Peter York, twenty-one. Davis, a comparatively mature twenty-four, ended up being the only member of the group willing to give interviews so it was suggested that the outfit be named in his honour.

Signed to the upstart Island label in 1964 and the following year they hit number one in Britain with "Keep on Running". It's spirited with some nice crunchy guitar parts but it already seemed to tie them to old school R&B, a genre that the likes of The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and The Who were fast moving away from. Some SDG songs are really good, others more on the forgettable side but they're somehow all more or less the same.

More or less the same but still capable of quality. To their credit, the SDG seemed to be trying to go out on a high note as their time together began to wind down. "Gimme Some Lovin'" was their penultimate single and it's a banger for the most part. Having always preferred Traffic myself, it's the sort of number I can appreciate for its energy and intensity while wishing it to be more musically adventuresome. (Traffic's nine-minute groove on their 1971 live album Welcome to the Canteen provides a glimpse of what "Gimme Some Lovin'" would've sounded like had Winwood's next group recorded it instead)

Nevertheless, vigourous R&B from this era is seldom unwelcome. The roughhouse sound probably gives an accurate idea of what they must have been like on the touring circuit. While Winwood was outgrowing the narrow confines of the SDG, his committed performance doesn't hint at any boredom and/or sense that he was being held back. That phlegmy sound his voice could produce isn't my favourite thing in the world but I do admire him for going all out with it. Then, there's his organ playing which refreshingly avoids those silly mid-sixties' acid rock traps of being far too serpentine for their own good. 

Winwood would become the poster child for short-lived groups. As a matter of fact, his teenage years as a part of The Spencer Davis group would be one of his longer tenures (rivaled only by a reformed Traffic from 1970 to 1974). Such was his vagabond ways that the charts could sometimes only reflect what his previous band had been up to. None of Traffic's many outstanding singles will be coming up in this space and neither will his work with Blind Faith nor Ginger Baker's Air Force. It is only his late adolescence and moribund middle age that is going to be represented which is a pity since it was his belated young adulthood that captures the full breadth of his considerable abilities.

Score: 8