![]() Wood and Ginger Baker in Baker’s band Air Force in 1970 (Image credit: Getty Images)Īs a result, the regional jazz circuit quickly seemed to Wood to be stifling and restrictive, and so he moved on, at first blowing for local bluesman Perry Foster, whose band the gauche young Robert Plant also passed through. By then, enterprising British promoters had begun to bring America’s great black artists to Britain to play, and Wood made pilgrimages to Birmingham Town Hall to see the likes of Muddy Waters, Ella Fitzgerald and his beloved Ray Charles, expanding his horizons. By the spring of 1962 they had secured a weekly booking at the Saracen’s Head pub in Dudley. Deciding their sound required tenor sax, Wood bought one and taught himself to play it. Together they formed a jazz quartet with two more local musicians. In this more bohemian environment he fell in with a fellow music nut, Steve Hadley, a pianist. Wood’s other outlet was painting, and after leaving high school he attended the nearby Stourbridge College Of Art. It was a magical place, like Narnia, surrounded by enchanted woodland but with steelworks and all this industry just down the road.” Ours was a very loving upbringing, and Corngreaves Hall also gave us everything we needed to imagine our own little world. “He was never able to read music, but created it with his ear. “No one in our family could actually play, so it must have been born in Chris,” says Steph Wood. As a teenager he developed an obsessive passion for jazz, and picked up records by Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Ray Charles at a Birmingham city-centre record shop, The Diskery, which was then also frequented by Winwood, Robert Plant and future ELO leader Jeff Lynne. He was too of his own mind, and subsequently taught himself to play both instruments. Muriel Wood signed up her son for piano and flute lessons, but he didn’t stick at them. Their father’s record collection encompassed Bing Crosby, big bands and Beethoven, and their mother had a piano under the stairs. And from the ages of nine and six respectively, they grew up in gothic splendour at Corngreaves Hall, a stately Georgian pile located in the heart of the Black Country, where their father was billeted as chief engineer of the borough. Sister Stephanie arrived three years later. Late-60s Traffic: (l-r) Jim Capaldi, Steve Winwood, Chris Wood, Dave Mason (Image credit: Getty Images)Ĭhris Wood was a war baby, born in the suburbs of Birmingham in 1944 to parents Stephen, a civil engineer, and Muriel Wood. Each band member was a virtuoso in his own right, but Winwood was the shining star, with Wood like a lighting conductor for his restless energy. In their relatively short, turbulent time together, Traffic roamed far and wide, their music encompassing pop whimsy, psychedelia, bucolic folk and a refined melange of rock, jazz and R&B. Wood, who excelled on sax and flute and was proficient on piano, bass and guitar, was a founding member of Traffic in 1967, along with Steve Winwood, drummer Jim Capaldi and guitarist Dave Mason. Yet it was as a multi-instrumentalist with Traffic that Wood soared highest, unshackled to ride the flow of that band’s often wondrous music. Among those he played with were his friend Jimi Hendrix, Free, John Martyn, Nick Drake, Ginger Baker and Dr John. ![]() A classic foil and sideman, Wood’s gift was to add colour to the landscapes of other people’s recordings, and in so doing give them dimension and defining features. The musical legacy Wood left behind stretches across three decades, through numerous collectives, and is imprinted upon a handful of dazzling albums. Within weeks of the session he was dead, aged just 39, his ravaged body and a broken heart having given up on him. The piece was meant to soundtrack, of all things, BBC TV’s coverage of live basketball, although Wood never did hear it aired.
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