Spencer Davis celebrates his 80th birthday today (July 17th).The Spencer Davis Group’s song “I’m a Man” came from a chord from Jimi Hendrix, the lyrics from producer Jimmy Miller and all of Traffic played on it. Big changes were afoot in London as 1966 turned into 1967. Jimi Hendrix had arrived, and the R&B-based sound of British music was detouring into psychedelia. 17-year-old Steve Winwood was about to record his last song with The Spencer Davis Group before heading to a Berkshire cottage with producer Jimmy Miller and a bunch of young friends to form Traffic. Somehow all of this played into the creation of Winwood’s final Davis Group track, “I’m a Man.” Spencer Davis explains the roles of two Jimmys — Jimi Hendrix and producer Jimmy Miller — in creating “I’m a Man.”
”I’d just visited Hendrix at his apartment and listening to him playing in the apartment and just sort of going, ‘How does he do it?’ And he showed me a couple of chords. Whatever it was he showed me, I managed to get some version of it and I said to Jimmy, ‘Look, why don’t we put this on?’ And that was the chord, which as soon as it comes on people recognize it. We did part of the music together and Jimmy Miller wrote all the lyrics. And we took it to Steve, got in the studio and Jim Capaldi was there, Dave Mason, of course, all the guys in Traffic.”
