Just a quick note to honor rock musician Rick Davies, the sensational composer-vocalist-keyboard player for Supertramp. Rick Davies may not have the immediate name recognition of the biggest stars, but he was an extremely talented musician, and his music with Supertramp is a very important part of my life. As noted on the Supertramp web site, Rick passed away on Saturday September 6 at the age of 81 after battling Multiple Myeloma for over 10 years. Rick was born in Swindon, England and developed a lifelong passion for jazz, blues, and rock'n'roll. I've detailed Supertramp's story in my previous Supertramp album ranking post here. But, briefly, Rick formed the band that would become Supertramp with composer-vocalist-keyboards-guitarist Roger Hodgson back in 1969, and although the band initially struggled to find their style and sound, amid changing lineups and two unsuccessful albums, they regrouped with a new lineup and sound and released a masterpiece and one of the greatest albums of all time, Crime of the Century, in 1974, and followed that with a string of great albums in Crisis? What Crisis? (1975), Even in the Quietest Moments (1977), and their big commercial breakthrough with mainstream hit singles, Breakfast in America (1979).
Supertramp is known for their unique brand of melodic progressive rock, blending catchy pop melodies with a jazz and blues-influenced prog rock sound, as well as for their keyboard-dominant songs and the dual vocal and songwriting interplay of Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson. Like Lennon-McCartney, Davies and Hodgson made a songwriting agreement early on that all their songs would be credited to both Rick and Roger, regardless of who contributed most to the song, and also like Lennon-McCartney, the actual collaboration also ran out fairly early with the songs being written almost completely by one or the other, and due to the different styles of each it is quite easy to tell who wrote what (and generally they each sing lead on their own songs). In general, Roger drifted more toward pop songs and melodies, whereas Rick delved more into jazz- and blues-inflected rock and prog. Thus, many of the band's most well-known songs (and hits, like Breakfast in America, Logical Song, and Give a Little Bit) were Roger's, yet many of the band's very best songs were Rick's. Although both have many great songs, and the great strength of the band was that interplay of the different styles of the two, personally, I tend to prefer Rick's songs and style over Roger's. Some of my favorite Rick songs are: Rudy, Crime of the Century, Another Man's Woman, Downstream, Asylum, From Now On, Gone Hollywood, Ain't Nobody But Me, Bloody Well Right, Cannonball, Oh Darling, Goodbye Stranger, Brother Where You Bound?, Better Days, Sooner or Later, You Win I Lose, Tenth Avenue Breakdown, and so many more.
As Rick and Roger became increasingly musically divergent in their styles, and following the somewhat disappointing album Famous Last Words (1982), Roger left, but Rick and the rest of the band continued on with another strong album with Brother Where You Bound? (1985), moving back to a more prog and jazz-oriented rock sound. A brief (and somewhat disastrous) detour into more 80's style pop followed with Free as a Bird (1987) and led to the band disbanding. But several years later Rick and the band re-formed for another go and the fine and vastly underrated albums Some Things Never Change (1997) and Slow Motion (2002), where Rick leaned more heavily on his jazz and blues background. The band did tour again in the early 2010's, and there were plans for the band to tour again in 2015, but were cancelled due to Rick's first battle with multiple myeloma, and which continued on until his death last week.
I was fortunate enough to see Supertramp live back in 1977 on the Quietest Moments tour, and Rick and the whole band were fantastic. If you haven't already, be sure to check out the couple of live shows I previously posted, from 1975 and 1977.
Rick's music will live on, and I know that I will always be listening to his wonderful music throughout my life (and hopefully even beyond that). Thanks Rick for all the great music you created.
