#26: THE SPENCER DAVIS GROUP
“Gimme Some Lovin’”
Single released: October 1966
Spotify doesn’t always get it right (see also: bears, Catholic, the Pope, woods). What is labelled as the “Single Mix” of “Gimme Some Lovin’” isn’t. Don’t fucking argue with me; time’s running out. What The Kids flew out of their doors to put at number two in what was then still called the hit parade – as though the war was not really over – was the Jimmy Miller mix, with additional percussion and yelping from various members of what was to become Traffic (“I’m A Man” was recorded at the same session) and if you want to hear that on streaming then go to the compilation Revolutions: The Very Best Of Steve Winwood.
Winwood of course already, palpably, has one foot outside the beat boom door, but these two songs form an extremely helpful bridge between what has already been – the innocent era of the Beat rave-up – and what is about to be; expanding, back to the countryside to rethink. Actually the Spencer Davis Group were sorely in need of another big hit by late ’66. Chris Blackwell took them to the Marquee Club, set up their equipment and basically commanded them to come up with something. “Gimme Some Lovin’” arose very naturally out of a half-hour jam and came together so well and efficiency that the band retreated to a café. A red-faced Blackwell turned out and yelled what the fuck do you think you’re doing? Calm down, the band retorted, and they went back to the Marquee, demonstrated what they’d come up with and Blackwell was floored.
It’s a fervent, fond farewell to its age, its falsettos and tambourines blending to lend the song an air of the celebratory second half of a New Orleans funeral procession. Things are never going to be as elementally simple as this again – everyone already knows that (the song was kept off number one by “Good Vibrations,” a record so supernaturally brilliant that it does not appear at all in this list, since I don’t feel the need to listen to it repeatedly these days) – but let’s recall and celebrate our recollection before we move somewhere else, and with any luck to something else.
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