Rick Davies, piano player, singer and soul of Supertramp, dies

BarcelonaBritish singer and pianist Rick Davies, co-founder of Supertramp, died on Saturday at the age of 81 "after battling multiple myeloma for ten years," the band's website confirmed. "Along with Roger Hodgson, he was co-writer, vocalist and pianist on some of Supertramp's most iconic songs," the statement from the group, which reached the top of the charts during the 1970s with albums such as Crime in the century (1974) and Breakfast in America (1979).

Davies and Hodgson's great melodic intuition turned Supertramp into a billing machine hits with a characteristic sound of sophisticated and accessible pop, with touches of jazz and rhythm 'n' blues and the piano as the main instrument. Their popularity began to wane when Hodgson – whose relationship with Davies cooled over the years – left the band in 1983 to pursue a solo career. Davies was forced to assume sole leadership of the band, which he kept active for another five years and in future and occasional reunions. His commitment to the group leads many fans to consider him the soul of Supertramp.

Born in 1944 in Swindon, England, Davies fell in love with music listening to jazz drummer Gene Krupa and studied percussion, but ended up opting for the piano, particularly mastering the characteristic sound of the Wurlitzer electronic piano. Supertramp was born in 1969 –although initially under the name Daddy– when Davies posted an ad for a band and Hodgson responded. They didn't have an easy start, and they struggled to find their place in a scene dominated by bands with a more forceful, guitar-based sound, but the success of Crime in the century catapulted the group's career in 1974.

Davies' voice was deeper and gravelier than Hodgson's, who was the lead singer on many of the hits of Supertramp, but Davies also wrote and sang iconic songs by the group such as Goodbye stranger either Bloody well right, sometimes resorting to one falsetto which placed his voice in a register similar to Hodgson's. Goodbye stranger, specifically, has become a very common song in movies over the years due to its inclusion in the film Magnolia (1999), and later in I Tonya (2017) and Beau is scared (2023).