Steve Winwood is an English singer, songwriter and musician whose genres include progressive rock, rhythm and blues, pop rock, and jazz. Though primarily a vocalist and keyboard player, Winwood also plays a wide variety of other instruments; on several of his solo albums he has played all instrumentation, including drums, mandolin, guitars, bass and saxophone. At age 14, Winwood joined the Spencer Davis Group along with older brother Muff, who later had success as a record producer, after Davis saw them performing as the Muffy Wood Jazz Band at a Birmingham pub called the Golden Eagle. The group made their debut at the Eagle and subsequently had a Monday-night residency there. Winwood’s distinctive high tenor singing voice and vocal style drew comparisons to Ray Charles.
The group had their first number 1 single at the end of 1965, with “Keep on Running”; the money from this success allowed Winwood to buy his own Hammond Organ. Winwood co-wrote and recorded the chart-topping hits “Gimme Some Lovin’‘” and “I’m a Man” before leaving the Spencer Davis Group in 1967. Winwood met drummer Jim Capaldi, guitarist Dave Mason, and multi-instrumentalist Chris Wood when they jammed together at The Elbow Room, a club in Aston, Birmingham. Soon thereafter, the quartet formed Traffic. Early in the group’s formation, Winwood and Capaldi formed a songwriting partnership, with Winwood writing music to match Capaldi’s lyrics. This partnership was the source of most of Traffic’s material, including popular songs such as “Paper Sun”.
Winwood formed the supergroup Blind Faith in 1969 with Eric Clapton, Giner Baker and Ric Grech. The band was short-lived, owing to Clapton’s greater interest in Blind Faith’s opening act Delaney & Bonnie; Clapton left the band at the tour’s end. However, Baker, Winwood and Grech stayed together to form Giner Baker’s Air Force. However, this project also turned out to be short-lived. Winwood soon went into the studio to begin work on a new solo album, tentatively titled Mad Shadows. However, Winwood ended up calling in Wood and Capaldi to help with session work, which prompted Traffic’s comeback album John Barleycorn Must Die in 1970.
Weariness with the grind of touring and recording prompted Winwood to leave Traffic and retire to sessioning for some years. Under pressure from Island Records, he resurfaced with his self-titled first solo album in 1977. This was followed by his 1980 hit Arc of a Diver (which included his first solo hit, “While You See a Chance”) and Talking Back to the Night in 1982. Both albums were recorded at his home in Gloucestershire with Winwood playing all instruments. He continued to do sessions during this period, and in 1983 he co-produced and played on Jim Capaldi’s top 40 hit “That’s Love” and co-wrote the Will Powers top 20 hit “Kissing With Confidence”.
In 1986, he moved to New York. There he enlisted the help of a coterie of stars to record Back in the High Life in the US, and the album was a hit. He topped the Billboard with “Higher Love,” and earned two Grammy Awards: for Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. All these albums were released on Island Records. However, at the peak of his commercial success, Winwood moved to Virgin Records and released Roll With It and Refugees of the Heart. The album Roll with It and the title track hit No. 1 on the USA album and singles charts in the summer of 1988. Another album with Virgin, Far From Home, was officially credited to Traffic, but nearly all the instruments were played by Winwood. Despite lacking a significant hit, it broke the top 40 in both the UK and USA.
His final Virgin album Junction Seven also broke the UK top 40. A new studio album, Nine Lives, was released 29 April 2008 by Wincraft Music through Columbia Records. The album opened at No. 12 on the Billboard album chart, his highest US debut ever. In 2008, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music to add to his honorary degree from Aston University, Birmingham.
