If you judge a man by the company he keeps, Dave Mason deserves to be a household name. He was someone who I was vaguely aware of, but no more than that until I was researching Dead Man Singing. I was aware of his in-out tenure with Traffic in the late 60s, an early exemplar of the ‘musical differences’ cliché. I also knew that in the mid 90s he had a brief spell in Fleetwood Mac, one of two guitarists drafted in to replace Lindsay Buckingham when the classic Rumours line-up suffered its first fracture. Among his other claims to fame that had passed me by were the fact that he was with his friend Jimi Hendrix when they both heard Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower for the first time. Mason went on to play on Hendrix’s famous version and almost joined the Jimi Hendrix Experience on bass when Noel Redding left. He also appeared on tracks by the Rolling Stones, Wings, George Harrison and was an early member of Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominoes project. Throw in his Traffic connections with Steve Winwood and, as I said, he moved in exalted rock company.

Listening again to early Traffic albums (having decided that my main character, Dave Masters, would hail from Birmingham, it made sense to make him a Traffic fan - I can imagine him loyally following them for their earliest local gigs), I found that it was Mason songs like Feelin’ Alright – a song that became a key part in Dave Masters’ live performances early in Dead Man Singing – that I was more drawn to. When I checked out his solo album Alone Together (1971), I realised that this was an album my Dave would have absolutely loved. It’s possibly the closest I’ve discovered to how I imagine the early Dave Masters albums sounding.

Alone Together combines an acoustic guitar bed with finely judged electric lead lines and flourishes. There are faster, driving takes such as the Allman Brothers sounding Only You Know and I Know, or Waitin’ On You where Mason sets the wah-wah to the max and trades licks with a honky-tonk piano. There are quieter, more reflective offerings like Shouldn’t Have Took More Than You Gave, Sad and Deep As You, or Look At You Look At Me which rides languidly to a fade out with an emotive extended guitar solo.

It's a coincidence that my Dave shares his name – and initials – with another singer songwriter with his roots in the 60s Birmingham music scene. I chose the name Dave because it felt right for a musician of that era – I was thinking more of messrs Gilmour, Crosby and Edmunds, to be honest – but Dave Mason more than deserves to be included in that line up. It’s also a coincidence that I gave Dave the same name as my own father. As for the surname Masters, that was chosen simply because it gave me some good punning titles for Dave’s albums – Live Masters, Lost Masters, etc – as well as for his self-focused tribute act Dave ReMastered. My Dave wasn’t directly based on Dave Mason at all, even if their music feels like such a good fit in retrospect.

If, like me, his work has passed you by, Alone Together is a fantastic entry point and well worth a listen. If you want to picture what an early Dave Masters album might have sounded like, you could do a lot worse. And if you just want an excellent slice of melodic 70s rock music, this comes highly recommended – just ask Jimi, Steve, Eric and the others.