A musician best known for his flute and saxophone work with Traffic, Chris Wood's legacy also included work with
Jimi Hendrix, Free, Ginger Baker‘s Air Force, John Martyn and many others. As a teenager he developed an obsessive passion for jazz, and picked up records by Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Ray Charles and subsequently taught himself to play.
Young
Stevie Winwood and the
Spencer Davis Group were instant sensations in Birmingham where Chris hung out and in 1965 broke out nationally with their No.1
Keep On Running. Wood was a regular face at their gigs, and he and Winwood were drawn to each other and became friends.
By 1967, Winwood’s mind was made up. Early that year he travelled up to the north‑east to play his final shows with the Spencer Davis Group. In a Newcastle hotel room, Winwood, Wood, Capaldi and Mason worked up a pop song,
Paper Sun, and with it the blueprint for
Traffic.
Wood’s influence on the music Traffic conjured there over the next three years was profound and lasting. In the first instance, its sense of other‑worldliness was rooted in the long walks that he would lead the others on through the surrounding countryside, bird-spotting and navigating ancient paths from old books he kept in his travel bag.
When Traffic went off and toured America, Wood struggled to hold on. Struck down by both a debilitating stage fright and fear of flying, he began to anaesthetize himself with booze and harder, harsher brews.
At just six tracks, their 1970 album
John Barleycorn Must Die was a dense, ambitious work, bringing together baroque folk and excursions into jazz-rock. It reached No.5 in the U.S. chart. Chris' flute and sax were an integral part of that successful musical blend.
Traffic disbanded in 1974 and by in 1979, Wood, now near broke, fled London for the relative peace of the Midlands and moved back in with his parents. He began going to church, and invested what little money he had left in a recording studio start-up in Birmingham. He passed away in Birmingham July 12, 1983, at age 39.
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