Jim Capaldi, 60; Founding Member and Drummer for Rock Group Traffic

Jim Capaldi, the drummer who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last March for his role in the influential British band Traffic, died Friday in London after a battle with stomach cancer. He was 60.

Five months after the induction of Capaldi and his bandmates -- whose epic signature songs included “Dear Mr. Fantasy” and “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” -- the drummer’s cancer was diagnosed.

His quickly deteriorating health forced him to scrap a planned concert tour that would have begun in October and re-teamed him with Traffic’s most famous member, lead singer and keyboardist Steve Winwood.

Traffic drew on a variety of musical styles that included R & B, jazz, quasi-classical experimentations and folk, and delivered them in long-form performances that created much of the “jam band” ethos that would inform the work of the Grateful Dead and, today, the Dave Matthews Band.

Traffic was formed in 1967 when Winwood, still a teen but already a veteran of the Spencer Davis Group, hooked up with Capaldi, guitarist Dave Mason, and saxophone and flute player Chris Wood.

Winwood was weary of the pop strictures of his former band, and with his new jam group he holed up in a cottage in Berkshire, England, to craft a sound that was in tune with the mind-flights of the late 1960s.

In the 1990 book “Rock Lives,” the late music journalist Timothy White quoted Capaldi describing those early days of bucolic isolation. “I sometimes look back and feel that we were an experimental group that went out into the natural wilds just to hammer it all out,” Capaldi said. “Back then, all the rock music was anchored to the city life.

“The fact that the four of us ... went back to the country to abandon the urban distractions and get into the music set a definite trend.”

The band’s membership was as unpredictable as their live improvisations. Winwood, for instance, left for a time to play in Blind Faith, and Mason was also an inconsistent presence.

Traffic ceased to exist by 1974. Still, albums such as “Traffic” in 1968 and “John Barleycorn Must Die” in 1970 gave them the acclaim that led to their Hall of Fame induction.

Capaldi was born Aug. 24, 1944, in Evesham, Worcestershire, the son of Italian immigrants.

The roiling music scene of England captured his imagination when he was young.

“I’d known Jim since we were 15 years old,” Mason said in a statement Friday.

“We lived close by each other in Worcestershire. He had bands, I had bands, and we gravitated toward working together.... Jim was a great collaborator and a great friend. I’ll miss his lyrics and his humor; he always had great jokes. I know we’ll all miss him dearly.”

After Traffic, Capaldi went on to record with his own band, the Contenders, but in 1994 went back to the old band’s banner, performing with Winwood as Traffic on the Woodstock reunion show and on tour.

Memorial arrangements were pending Friday. Capaldi is survived by his wife, Aninha, and his daughters Tabitha, 28, and Tallulah, 26.