Rick Davies, the founder and singer of the British rock band Supertramp, who co-wrote some of its biggest hits and lent a biting, world-weary tone to its music, died on Saturday at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 81.
Mr. Davies died from complications of multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer, which he learned that he had more than a decade ago, according to his wife and manager, Sue Davies.
He was “the voice and pianist behind Supertramp’s most iconic songs, leaving an indelible mark on rock music history,” the band said on its website.
Supertramp achieved a commercial breakthrough in 1974 with its album “Crime of the Century,” and went on to become one of the most popular British groups of the 1970s and 1980s. The album’s hit song, “Bloody Well Right,” opened with Mr. Davies on the Wurlitzer electric piano, and his use of the Wurlitzer became a defining feature of the group’s sound.
Supertramp’s hits included “Goodbye Stranger,” “The Logical Song” and “Another Man’s Woman,” a song in which he often improvised piano solos during performances.
In 1979, it released the album “Breakfast in America,” which topped charts, sold over 18 million copies and helped the band sell out concert venues worldwide.
Rolling Stone magazine called it “a textbook-perfect album of post-Beatles, keyboard-centered English art rock that strikes the shrewdest possible balance between quasi-symphonic classicism and rock ’n’ roll.”
Rick Davies was born in Swindon, England, in 1944 above his mother’s hairdressing shop. His father served in the British military, where he detonated bombs during World War II. Mr. Davies is survived by his wife, Sue Davies.
His love of music started in childhood, when he found an old Gene Krupa album, the band said in its statement. Drawn toward jazz, blues and the pianist Ray Charles, Mr. Davies started playing drums and then taught himself to play piano.
“Suddenly people were responding to me,” he told the site Pop Culture Classics in an interview in 1997. “That instrument just seemed right for me.”
In 1969, when Mr. Davies was 25, he placed an ad in Melody Maker, a weekly British music magazine, looking for collaborators. “Genuine opportunity for good musicians,” the ad said.
A 19-year-old named Roger Hodgson responded, and they formed a band, calling themselves Daddy and practicing in a farmhouse in Kent. They had four songs, two of which were covers.
“Something about the contrast between Hodgson’s light and Davies’s dark hinted at a future,” the band’s website said.
They went on to form Supertramp with bandmates Richard Palmer, Bob Millar and Keith Baker.
Mr. Palmer, who was an English major, suggested the name Supertramp, inspired by the name of the 1908 book, “The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp.” Mr. Davies chose Supertramp from a list of other possible names, Mrs. Davies said.
In contrast to Mr. Hodgson’s softer tenor voice, Mr. Davies’s baritone had a snarling, almost nasal quality that could be both sensitive and dramatic. As Mr. Davies and Mr. Hodgson drifted apart, Mr. Hodgson left the band in 1983 to pursue a solo career.
Supertramp performed for the last time as a band for the public in Carcassonne, France, in 2011. The band canceled a sold-out European tour in 2015 because of Mr. Davies’s cancer treatment.
In more recent years, even as Mr. Davies’s health challenges kept him from touring globally, he performed locally, in Amagansett, N.Y., at Stephen Talkhouse, as part of the band Ricky and the Rockets.
Several covers of Supertramp songs rose up the charts in the 2000s.
Supertramp’s hit song “Give a Little Bit,” from its 1977 album “Even in the Quietest Moments,” was covered by the American rock band Goo Goo Dolls in 2004, and the song peaked at No. 37 on the Billboard Hot 100. That same year, Gym Class Heroes sampled “Breakfast in America” in their song “Cupid’s Chokehold,” which hit No. 4 on the chart.
Susan C. Beachy contributed research from New York.
Jenny Gross is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.
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