Recommendations of the Editorial team
Rick Davies, the singer and keyboardist, who, as a founding member of the Prog and Pop rock band Supertramp, wrote some of the group’s most popular and permanent songs, died in his house on Long Island on Saturday. He was 81 years old.
Breakthrough with “Crime of the Century”
“The Supertramp Partnership is very sad to announce the death of Supertramp founder Rick Davies after a long illness,” wrote the band in an explanation. “We had the privilege of knowing him and playing with him for over 50 years. Our sincere condolences are Sue Davies.” A cause of death was not mentioned immediately, but Davies had fought multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer for over a decade.
The band name goes back to the book “The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp” by the Welsh author William Henry Davies published in 1908. Davies founded the group in 1969 with guitarist Richard Palmer, drummer Robert Millar and singer bassist Roger Hodgson. The debut album “Supertramp” and the successor “Indelibly Stamped” from 1969 and 1970 initially received little attention.
After a realignment of the band, Davies and Hodgson reached the commercial breakthrough with “Crime of the Century” in 1974. This included Davies’ pieces “Bloody Well Right” and “Crime of the Century”. Hodgson’s “Dreamer” became one of the biggest hits in the group.
“Breakfast in America” and world success
In the following years, Davies wrote other classics in band history, including “Goodbye Stranger”, “Cannonball” and “My Kind of Lady”. The sixth album “Breakfast in America” reached four times a platinum, won two Grammy Awards and received a nomination as an album of the year.
Davies was born in Swindon, Wiltshire, west of London. Originally he was drawn to drums after finding an old album by the Gene Jazz drummer Gene Krupa. “It hit me like a rocket. It was like water in the desert,” he said in 1997 in an interview with “Pop Culture Classics”. “In the English radio of that time you only heard Vera Lynn and kitschy stuff.” After switching to the piano, “people suddenly reacted to me. The instrument just seemed to fit me.”
Early bands with Gilbert O’Sullivan and Noel Redding
He founded the band Rick’s Blues with the later pop singer Gilbert O’Sullivan and later the Lonely Ones, in which the future Jimi Hendrix Experience Bassist Noel Redding played.