Rick Davies, singer and co-founder of Supertramp, has died : NPR

Rick Davies, the British musician who based the prog-pop band Supertramp, died on Sept. 6 on the age of 81. He’d been battling a number of myeloma for over a decade.

Supertramp, which spurred hits like “Give A Little Bit” and “The Logical Track” within the Nineteen Seventies, shared the information of Davies’ demise in social media posts. “His soulful vocals and unmistakable contact on the Wurlitzer grew to become the heartbeat of the bands’ sound,” reads the assertion.

Born in Swindon, England in 1944, Davies gravitated in direction of music from an early age, when he first heard Gene Krupa’s “Drummin’ Man.” He fell in love with the piano and performed jazz and blues at first of his profession. Then, in 1969, Davies took out an advert within the music journal Melody Maker in search of bandmates.

He heard again from a fancy, Beatles-loving teenager named Roger Hodgson. Collectively, they went from enjoying Bob Dylan covers to crafting rock songs that may finally give strategy to grandiose saxophone solos, melodic pop hooks and fluttering harmonies. “Davies and Hodgson couldn’t have been extra completely different — working-class grit meets dreamy idealism — however in these variations lay their magic,” reads the band’s biography.

Supertramp’s worldwide industrial breakthrough got here in 1977 with the album Even within the Quietest Moments, which rose to No. 16 on the Billboard 200 chart. In 1979, the band struck gold with Breakfast in America, a playful but sweeping exploration of American extra on the finish of a decade outlined by idealism and disillusionment. The album landed three singles on Billboard‘s Scorching 100, together with the Davies-penned “Goodbye Stranger,” which options Davies’ jaded baritone contrasted in opposition to Hodgson’s vibrant falsetto and devolves from a handy guide a rough sing-along to a roaring guitar solo.

Supertramp launched yet another studio album known as …Well-known Final Phrases… in 1982 earlier than Hodgson left the band. Davies continued enjoying with a number of iterations of the group on and off for many years to come back. Though Hodgson by no means returned to the lineup, Supertramp performed its ultimate present in Madrid in 2012.

Davies’ most cancers analysis made it tough for him to tour, however he saved enjoying music near house for a number of years with a bunch of buddies dubbed Ricky and the Rockets.