A look at the back cover ofCrime Of The Century reveals the expected credits and informative text, but also two words printed unobtrusively and without further explanation in the top left: ‘To Sam’. This small yet significant note is a respectful nod In the direction of Dutch millionaire and early Supertramp philanthropist of sorts Stanley August Miesegaes. Known affectionately as Sam, owing to his initials, it is no stretch that he was as instrumental and as vital a cog in the early Supertramp machine as any of the musicians involved in its coming together. From the moment he first saw Rick Davies playing with a band named The Joint, in Germany in the late 1960s, it was his belief and financial support which allowed the fledgling band to keep on the road and making music.
Rick Davies was born in 1944 in Swindon, Wiltshire, with a hairdresser mother and a father in the Merchant Navy. Oddly enough, for someone who would become synonymous with playing keyboards, the first instrument which fascinated him was the drums when he was given an old radiogram at the age of seven which included a few records. One of these was a song called ‘Drummin’ Man’ by the remarkable Gene Krupa and his orchestra, and it fired the young Davies’ imagination like nothing else he had ever heard. ‘It hit me like a thunderbolt’, he said later. ‘I must have played it 2,000 times’. Galvanised by this moment, he set out to learn to play the drums, which was his first instrument.
By 1959, he had become entranced by rock ‘n’ roll and, by now, was also playing the keyboards, though surprisingly, he was self- taught on that instrument as opposed to the lessons he had taken to learn the drums. The first band he joined went by the typically unimaginative name (of the time) Vince and the Vigilantes. By 1962, he was emboldened enough to start his own band for the first time, and although ‘Rick’s Blues’ wasn’t much of an improvement in terms of a band name, it was a significant landmark in his early career. Having, by now, switched to the electric piano himself, the drum stool in Rick’s Blues was occupied by a young man named Ray O’Sullivan, who would go on to his own success a decade later following his own switch to piano and a change of name to Gilbert O’Sullivan. Rick had, in fact, taught Ray the drums and also the piano, and they remained friends. O’Sullivan later became the best man at Rick’s wedding. Rick’s Blues disbanded when Rick’s father became ill, and he took a job as a welder, which he later confessed to absolutely loathing.
His musical ambitions would not be stifled, however, and in 1966, he managed to secure a place as organist in a band called The Lonely Ones. This was quite notable as he had, in fact, never played the organ in his life but assumed it would be much the same as any other keyboard and simply lied about it when applying. The Lonely Ones, at one point, included the later Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding, though he had already left the band by the time Rick came on board. In 1967, The Lonely Ones changed their name to the scarcely better ‘The Joint’ and began playing on the continent, where they would go on to provide music for several German films, which have been lost to the mists of time long ago. It was soon after this that he first encountered Sam, and his destiny was to be forever changed.
The Joint were working in Germ
