November 13, 2026

Dave Mason

Special Features, Tributes British Artists

Photo: Matt Johnson, Omaha, 2022 (CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Dave Mason | Born May 10, 1946, Worcester, England | Died April 19, 2026, Gardnerville, Nevada

Dave Mason, the guitarist, singer and songwriter who co-founded Traffic and wrote “Feelin’ Alright?”, died peacefully at his home in Gardnerville, Nevada, on April 19, 2026. He was 79. His family announced the news through his representatives and no cause of death was given. Mason had cancelled his 2025 tour dates and later retired from the road, citing ongoing health challenges, but he insisted he was not done making music, and his final album had arrived only a year earlier.

Born in Worcester, England, Mason grew up an avid follower of Hank Marvin, Buddy Guy and Elmore James and was leading his own band by his teens. In 1964 he joined The Hellions with drummer Jim Capaldi, and while playing Hamburg’s Star-Club the pair befriended Steve Winwood of the Spencer Davis Group. Three years later the three of them, plus woodwind player Chris Wood, formed Traffic. Mason wrote and sang the band’s sitar-laced “Hole in My Shoe”, a Top 3 hit in Britain in 1967, then walked away after the debut album Mr. Fantasy, came back for the self-titled 1968 follow-up and was out again within months. His relationship with the band was never simple. Winwood later recalled that Mason would arrive with a finished song and tell everyone what to play. But those finished songs are a big part of why the early Traffic sounded more like a rock and pop band than the jazzy, long-form outfit of John Barleycorn Must Die and The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys. “Feelin’ Alright?” barely charted for Traffic, but Joe Cocker’s 1969 version turned it into a standard that has since been covered dozens of times.

Between and after his Traffic stints, Mason was one of the most in-demand sidemen in rock. He played 12-string acoustic guitar on Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” and sang backing vocals on “Crosstown Traffic”, both from Electric Ladyland. He played shehnai on the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” and guitar on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and Wings’ “Listen to What the Man Said”. After settling in the United States in 1969, he toured with Delaney & Bonnie, whose circle drew in both Harrison and Eric Clapton, and he played on early Derek and the Dominos sessions in 1970.

His solo career began with Alone Together (1970), which gave the world “Only You Know and I Know”, a hit for Mason and an even bigger one for Delaney & Bonnie. A duo album with Cass Elliot followed, and in 1977 Let It Flow went platinum on the strength of “We Just Disagree”, a Jim Krueger song that Mason turned into one of the most graceful breakup records of the decade and a classic rock radio staple ever since. He toured and recorded with Fleetwood Mac from 1993 to 1995, appearing on the album Time. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Traffic in 2004 and the same year co-founded RKS Guitars with designer Ravi Sawhney. In 2024 he published a memoir named after his signature song, Only You Know & I Know.

Mason never stopped going back to the well. His last album, A Shade of Blues (March 2025), revisited Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy” and “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” with Joe Bonamassa. It was a fitting close for a musician whose best work was always a conversation between the blues he grew up on and the pop craft he brought to everything he touched.

Essential Recordings

“Hole in My Shoe” by Traffic (single, 1967)
Traffic by Traffic (1968), featuring “Feelin’ Alright?”
“All Along the Watchtower” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, from Electric Ladyland (1968)
Alone Together (1970), featuring “Only You Know and I Know”
Let It Flow (1977), featuring “We Just Disagree”
A Shade of Blues (2025)