Rick Davies, singer and co-founder of Supertramp, has died
Rick Davies, the British musician who founded the prog-pop band Supertramp, died on Sept. 6 at the age of 81. He’d been battling multiple myeloma for over a decade.
Supertramp, which spurred hits like “Give A Little Bit” and “The Logical Song” in the 1970s, shared the news of Davies’ death in social media posts. “His soulful vocals and unmistakable touch on the Wurlitzer became the heartbeat of the bands’ sound,” reads the statement.
Born in Swindon, England in 1944, Davies gravitated towards music from an early age, when he first heard Gene Krupa’s “Drummin’ Man.” He fell in love with the piano and played jazz and blues in the beginning of his career. Then, in 1969, Davies took out an ad in the music magazine Melody Maker looking for bandmates.
He heard back from a posh, Beatles-loving teenager named Roger Hodgson. Together, they went from playing Bob Dylan covers to crafting rock songs that would eventually give way to grandiose saxophone solos, melodic pop hooks and fluttering harmonies. “Davies and Hodgson could not have been more different — working-class grit meets dreamy idealism — but in those differences lay their magic,” reads the band’s biography.
Supertramp’s international commercial breakthrough came in 1977 with the album Even in the Quietest Moments, which rose to No. 16 on the Billboard 200 chart. In 1979, the band struck gold with Breakfast in America, a playful yet sweeping exploration of American excess at the end of a decade defined by idealism and disillusionment. The album landed three singles on Billboard‘s Hot 100, including the Davies-penned “Goodbye Stranger,” which features Davies’ jaded baritone contrasted against Hodgson’s vibrant falsetto and devolves from a snappy sing-along to a roaring guitar solo.
Supertramp released one more studio album called …Famous Last Words… in 1982 before Hodgson left the band. Davies continued playing with several iterations of the group on and off for decades to come. Although Hodgson never returned to the lineup, Supertramp played its final show in Madrid in 2012.
Davies’ cancer diagnosis made it difficult for him to tour, but he kept playing music close to home for several years with a group of friends dubbed Ricky and the Rockets.
Israel says it carried out a strike on Hamas’ main political office in Qatar
The Israeli military says it has carried out an airstrike on Hamas political headquarters in Qatar. Television footage from Doha showed a huge cloud of gray smoke rising over the area of Doha where the bombing took place.
New books out today: A Dan Brown thriller, John Prine bio, and World Wide Web memoir
New books this week include Secret of Secrets — the sixth installment of The Da Vinci Code saga, plus a tech memoir from Tim Berners-Lee and a career-spanning anthology from Terry McMillan.
‘We just want to get to the truth’: Jabari Peoples’ family still seeking answers
Eighteen-year-old Jabari Peoples was shot and killed by a Homewood police officer earlier this year. His family is still reeling from the loss and maintain their disagreement with police’s account of the incident.
Here’s what happens when private equity buys homes in your neighborhood
What makes rents go down and neighborhood diversity go up? Corporate landlords. But they also make it harder to own for yourself.
A new Nation’s Report Card shows drops in science, math and reading scores
It's the first Nation's Report Card since the Trump administration began making cuts to the U.S. Education Department. The scores reflect the state of student achievement in early 2024.
Here they are: The best student podcasts in America
For the 2025 NPR Student Podcast Challenge, we've listened to nearly 2,000 entries from around the U.S., and narrowed them down to 11 middle school and 10 high school finalists.
