Steve Winwood life and biography

Stephen Lawrence "Steve" Winwood is an English international recording artist whose career spans nearly 50 years. He is a songwriter and a musician whose genres include soul music (blue-eyed soul), R&B, rock, blues-rock, pop-rock, and jazz.

Winwood is a multi-instrumentalist who plays the electric organ, synthesizers, bass, drums, guitar, mandolin, violin and other stringed instruments, besides having done notable works as a Producer. His trademark style is singing in a tenor voice and playing the Hammond organ. In addition to his solo career, he was a key member of the bands The Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Blind Faith and Go. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Traffic in 2004. Winwood has won numerous Grammy Awards in the United States.

In 2008, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Winwood #33 in its 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2005, Winwood was honored as a BMI Icon at the annual BMI London Awards for his "enduring influence on generations of music makers."

During his teens, Winwood played Hammond B-3 organ and guitar in "pick-up" bands that backed up well-known US blues performers. He formed Blind Faith in 1969 with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Ric Grech. His first solo album was released in 1977. In 1986, Winwood went to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with his song "Higher Love", and with this earned the year's Grammy Award for Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

Steve Winwood exploded onto the London music scene as a teenager with his powerful, soulful tenor — notably on "Gimme Some Lovin'" and "I'm a Man" with the Spencer Davis Group. "I thought he had the greatest voice," said Billy Joel, "this skinny little English kid singing like Ray Charles." The frontman for the jazz-infused pop of Traffic and then the jam rock of Blind Faith (with Eric Clapton), Winwood re-emerged in the mid-Eighties with the hits "Back in the High Life Again" and "Higher Love" — highly polished soul pop that made him a star all over again. "He was able to copy Jimmy Reed, and I thought, 'Where the hell is this voice coming from?' " said Spencer Davis. "From a diminutive guy, at that age, how can he do it? But he did it."

A new studio album, Nine Lives, was released 29 April 2008 on Columbia Records. The album opened at #12 on the Billboard 200 album chart, his highest US debut ever. Also in 2008, Winwood received an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music to add to his honorary degree from Aston University, Birmingham.

Discography
Solo:
1977: Steve Winwood
1980: Arc of a Diver
1982: Talking Back to the Night
1986: Back in the High Life
1988: Roll with It
1990: Refugees of the Heart
1997: Junction Seven
2003: About Time
2008: Nine Lives

Read more