Stevie Winwood was still a young kid when he quit the Spencer Davies group to form his own band. He had been heralded as having the best Blues voice in Britain and had powered through a number of great singles and a few albums with Spencer and Co. By the end part of the sixties with the advent of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Pink Floyd and a host of others, the British Underground was getting into full swing, Youth culture was taking off and Spencer Davies did not seem quite so cool. Stevie wanted a band with better Underground Freak credentials; he wanted in on the action.
He gathered together a bunch of top musicians and headed off to an isolated farm-house to rehearse as was the wont. Those musicians were the cream of the bunch with Jim Capaldi on drums, Chris Wood on flute and saxophone, and Dave Mason on guitar. Steve was looking for something Psychedelic and different and achieved it. With some great songs from Mason the band took off!
There seemed to be some weird schizophrenia going on. The singles seemed commercial and the albums aimed at the Underground. They didn’t seem quite sure what scene they wanted to be in. Doing both was not an option. The charts were looked down on by the Underground Freaks. Being a bread-head and opting in to the establishment was definitely not the way to go for Freaks. While ‘Hole in my shoe’ and ‘Here we go round the Mulbery Bush’ were most definitely psychedelic they were a bit too Poppy for Underground tastes. Perhaps that was why Dave Mason left? Fortunately the albums were of sufficient quality that Traffic were able to retain their alternative culture credentials. They got away with it.
There was no denying that tracks like ‘Dear Mr Fantasy’ and ‘Feelin’ Alright’ were not Pop trivia. Traffic were a serious band and fully accepted on the Underground circuit. Live they would extend tracks like these into twenty minute epics that got into a groove and were hypnotic. The band were so tight that the music was divine. There were Jazz influences, Indian and Rock. The lyrics were good, arrangements superb and no other band sounded quite like them. Stevie had developed his voice into an incredible range and depth. They were even better live than they were on record. It was magic.
After two brilliant albums and a final album ‘Last Exit’ the band was disbanded by Stevie. He went on to form Blind Faith, reformed Traffic a couple of times and pursued a solo career. Nothing ever came close to those first two Traffic albums though.