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The singer, songwriter and guitarist Dave Mason, who has died aged 79, was the superstar who never was. He first found fame as a founder member of Traffic, and wrote some of the most popular songs from their early repertoire, but could never quite see eye-to-eye with the band’s precocious genius Steve Winwood.

Mason’s self-evident talents, which included copious skills on acoustic and electric guitars and a grainy, soulful singing voice, then allowed him to form creative relationships with some of the biggest names of late-1960s and 70s rock, including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Delaney & Bonnie, George Harrison, Cass Elliot and Crosby Stills and Nash – though never on a long-lasting basis.

In 1975 he featured on the US chart-topping single Listen to What the Man Said by Paul McCartney’s Wings, and in the mid-90s he was temporarily a member of Fleetwood Mac, featuring on their album Time (1995), for which he co-wrote a couple of tracks.

He also released 16 solo albums, the last of them A Shade of Blues (2023), and notched up seven successive Top 50 entries on the US album charts between 1970 and 1977. His first solo disc, the widely admired Alone Together (1970), reached No 22 in the US, while Let It Flow (1977) sold a million copies, even though it only reached 37 on the US chart. It also generated Mason’s biggest hit single, We Just Disagree (written by Jim Krueger), which climbed to 12 in the US.

On Mason’s death Winwood was fulsome in his praise of his former band member’s talents. But relations between the two were not always so beatific. Mason recalled how Winwood had terminated his tenure in Traffic by telling him: “I don’t like the way you write, I don’t like the way you sing. I don’t like the way you play. And we don’t want you in the band any more.”

It seemed also that Winwood disliked Mason’s habit of writing on his own, rather than collaboratively with bandmates.

Traffic formed in 1967, after Winwood had left the Spencer Davis Group and joined forces with Mason, the drummer Jim Capaldi and the flute and sax player Chris Wood. Mason and Capaldi had previously played together in the Hellions, and with Wood in Deep Feeling. The quartet retired to a primitive cottage in Berkshire to knock their music into shape, and became one of the foundational acts of Chris Blackwell’s Island Records.

For their first album, Mr Fantasy (1967), which made it to No 16 in the UK, Mason wrote Hole in My Shoe, a No 2 hit single in the UK. Yet by the time the album was released he had already quit the band, feeling that “it was too much success too quick, and I couldn’t handle it”.

He then spent time in the US with the country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons and the rock/soul duo Delaney & Bonnie, but a chance encounter with Traffic in New York, where they were recording their second album, led to him to rejoin the band. The resulting album, Traffic (1968), was raved over by critics, reached the Top 10 in Britain and 17 in the US, and gave them a minor hit single with Mason’s composition Feelin’ Alright?. The song would later gain a new lease of life via numerous cover versions, not least when Joe Cocker recorded it for his With a Little Help from My Friends album.

Yet Mason was fired from Traffic, and it was not long before the band dissolved entirely when Winwood quit to join Clapton in Blind Faith. Mason immersed himself in the musical ferment of London.

He attended recording sessions for the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, banged a drum and played the oboe-like shehnai on the Stones’ Street Fighting Man, and featured in recording sessions with Hendrix for his Electric Ladyland album, adding acoustic guitar and bass to Hendrix’s version of Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower.

Mason also went on to record that Dylan song for his album Dave Mason in 1974, and borrowed its chord progression for his song Look at You Look at Me, from his first solo album Alone Together.

He was born in Worcester, the younger of the two sons of Edward Mason and his wife, Nora (nee Wilson), who together ran a sweet shop. He became infatuated with the electric guitar on records he heard on the radio, and particularly the playing of Hank Marvin of the Shadows. When his father bought him a guitar, his influences broadened to include blues players such as Buddy Guy and Elmore James. He formed his own band called the Jaguars, who recorded a single that was paid for by Mason’s parents.

In 1969 Mason transplanted himself to the US, and became a member of Delaney & Bonnie’s band. They were the support act for Blind Faith’s one and only American tour, and Mason also featured on the duo’s live album On Tour With Eric Clapton (1970), recorded at Fairfield Halls in Croydon in December 1969.

He then recorded Alone Together for Blue Thumb records, featuring an array of stellar musicians and showcasing some of his most evocative and powerful songs, such as Sad And Deep as You and Shouldn’t Have Took More Than You Gave. In 1970 Delaney & Bonnie scored a US Top 20 hit with a rework of its opening track, Only You Know and I Know (which would also be the title of Mason’s memoir, published in 2024).

By the time the album was released, Mason was back in the UK, playing a few shows as part of Clapton’s new band Derek and the Dominos and on sessions for Harrison’s triple LP, All Things Must Pass. Returning to Los Angeles, he teamed up with Elliot (of the Mamas & the Papas) to record the album Dave Mason and Cass Elliot (1970).

Then followed one final fling with Traffic, whom he rejoined for a batch of live shows in the summer of 1971, which were recorded for the live album Welcome to the Canteen. “It could have been a lot better,” Mason reflected. “We didn’t rehearse enough … For three years I was trying to put Traffic back together the way it was, but there were too many personal conflicts between me and Steve for that ever to happen.” Nonetheless, the album reached No 26 on the US chart.

Thereafter Mason busied himself with his solo career, releasing albums regularly throughout the 70s and 80s. However, his progress was marred by painful lawsuits with both the Blue Thumb and Columbia labels, and in 2011 he was among a group of artists who successfully sued Universal Music Group alleging under-payment of digital royalties. In 2004 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Traffic.

He is survived by his fourth wife, Winifred, whom he married in 2018, and by a daughter, Danielle, from a previous relationship. A son, True, died in 2006.

• David Thomas Mason, musician, born 10 May 1946; died 19 April 2026