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Song Draft
Gimme Some Lovin – The Spencer Davis Group
Album: Single – Gimme Some Lovin’ with B Side being Blues in F
Written by: Steve Winwood – one album also credits Spencer Davis and Mervyn Muff Winwood
Time: 2:58
Steve Winwood and the Spencer Davis group were trying to come up with another number 1 song. The things they released after their previous number 1’s “Keep on Running” and “Someone Help Me”. They were not having much success, when “Gimme Some Lovin’” just came together. From the wiki article about the song – “We started to mess about with riffs, and it must have been eleven o’clock in the morning. We hadn’t been there half an hour, and this idea just came. We thought, bloody hell, this sounds really good. We fitted it all together and by about twelve o’clock, we had the whole song. Steve had been singing ‘Gimme, gimme some loving’ – you know, just yelling anything, so we decided to call it that. We worked out the middle eight and then went to a cafe that’s still on the corner down the road. Blackwell came to see how we were going on, to find our equipment set up and us not there, and he storms into the cafe, absolutely screaming, ‘How can you do this?’ he screams. Don’t worry, we said. We were all really confident. We took him back, and said, how’s this for half an hour’s work, and we knocked off ‘Gimme Some Lovin’ and he couldn’t believe it. We cut it the following day and everything about it worked. That very night we played a North London club and tried it out on the public. It went down a storm. We knew we had another No. 1.”
The crazy thing is that Steve Winwood was 14 when he joined the Spencer Davis Group along with older brother Muff. He had been playing in clubs with Muff previously, and they had turned the piano that Steve played around so that no one could see that he was very underaged for the clubs.
This song has been featured in a lot of things, and it is one that likely everyone knows. The keyboard work by Steve Winwood is fantastic. Pete York’s percussion is spot on, along with the bass and guitar work by Muff Winwood and Spencer Davis, respectively.
I asked Hans to use the Finland TV version of this song for the youtube link. It is the slowest version of the song that I know of, but it is fantastic nonetheless.
slicethelife 
What a great song!! I remember reading how young Winwood was when this was recorded and being floored.
We played this song in marching band/alumni band and remember my pal hated it. Why? He was the tuba player and all he played through the whole song was the bass line…..which was in total 3 or 4 notes over and over and over….lol
Fantastic choice! The bass line is instantly recognizable and then when the keys come in – pure joy! Great backstory about how they came up with it – funny how some songs just come together with no effort
The final round of the draft just keeping getting better and better 😀
What an awesome song. This song sounds fresh every time I hear it.
Yup!
This song has to get the most unmusical of persons toes tapping; Otherwise you’re deaf or dead. And this slower version sounds good; I would have said nothing comes close to the original, but the Finnish version has a barely able to be restrained feel to it.
One of my favorite songs of the 60s and of all time!
mighty good song. What a talent Winwood is. Man, both he and the other Stevie W – Wonder – putting out music as teenagers back then that was better than what most adults at the time could do.
Excellent song! Love Winwood.
Fantastic choice – such an iconic song. It’s amazing how Steve Winwood was when he joined Spencer Davis Group and what an unbelievable voice he had. The song also perfectly illustrates the growling sound you can get out of a Hammond – I never get tired of it and it still gives me goosebumps!
I have tickets for Steve Winwood and Steely Dan for June 30, 2022 at a great outdoor venue in New Jersey. The concert was rescheduled from this past summer. I saw Winwood in March 2018 during his “Greatest Hits Live” tour – so good! Hope this June gig is happening!
Good one! It was neat to hear the slower version. It has some extra personality that we don’t hear on the studio release. I had no idea Winwood was that young when they started!
One of my favorites from that era. Winwood used a Hammond B 3 church style organ ran through a rotating Leslie speaker cabinet. He cranked the baby up and put the Leslie into over drive and that’s what gives the keyboard that unique almost fuzztone quality. It took our keyboard player a while to replicate the sound using an amplifier. Great pick.