From swbeach@worldchat.com Sun Oct 30 11:23:26 2005
Subject:vintage Winwood DVD find

For you Winwood fans....here's a post I made on another list a while back.

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Let me start off saying that I was weaned on the on the Spencer Davis Group LP featuring Stevie Winwood "Gimme Some Lovin", along with the Rascals "Collections" LP featuring Felix Cavaliere, circa 1966.

So what a surprise to me when I'm browsing Amazon the other day when I come across the "Spencer Davis Group - Live 1966". What a treasured find! It is basically a Scandanvian(?) television documentary of the group, performing about 8-10 songs live in television studio, complete with a polite, young Scandinavian audience. The band performs almost all of the tracks from the GSL album, the first 3-4 featuring Stevie on lead guitar, then him switching over to Hammond M-100. The audio is excellent for it's time. Winwood is no more the 18 yrs. old, tops. Closeups reveal pimples all over his face. IMHO, if you're a Winwood fan at all...... his voice has never been as strong as it was in this particular time frame. He has lots of power and control, and it sounds fatter, bluesier, that any of the stuff he did with Traffic. The SDG was basically a working-class blues band. When they show him playing the M-100, the camera angles are right over his shoulder, so you can see almost everything he is doing. Playing through a Marshall amp, it's great to see him use the built-in vibrato and drawbars and the way he comps with his left hand. Interesting to see his voicings when they play GSL..... he has the first two drawbars pushed in and is doing two-handed chords in the middle of the upper manual. I never would have thought this to be the case. I would imagine then, that it is an M-100 on the studio recording of GSL. For I'm a Man as well.

There is also a section on the DVD, after Stevie leaves the group, where Spencer is auditioning new guys to replace Winwood. He gets a vocalist that sounds very much like Winwood, and a organ player named Eddie Hardin that mimicks him on the Hammond......still a white M-100 that I suspect belonged to the band, not Stevie. From Traffic on, Steve played a C-3 I believe, with Leslies.

I would estimate this documentary to have been recorded just between the single release of Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm a Man. This is vintage if you're interested at all.

Enjoy,

Steve B.

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