Rick Davies, Lead Singer of Supertramp, Dies at 81...

In contrast to his bandmate Roger Hodgson’s softer tenor voice, Mr. Davies’s sound had a snarling, almost nasal quality that could be both sensitive and dramatic. Mr. Hodgson left the band in 1983 to pursue a solo career. Mr. Davies was born in Swindon, England, in 1944. 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.” Supertramp canceled a 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 as part of the band Ricky and the Rockets.