Topic: Robert Wilkins-Cover on new Clapton album

[LusciousLucy]

cf. http://www.mojo4music.com/blog/2010/08/eric_clapton_i_hate_my_singing.html

I believe Wilkin's "That's no way to get along" to be one of the most beautiful tunes ever - and absolutely uncoverable. So I'm curious what Eric and J.J. will make out of it..  

[Parlor Picker]

I suppose we should keep an open mind, but if I'm honest I dread hearing it on the radio.

[Parlor Picker]

Point taken, Lucy.

[eric]

To me, Clapton is an extraordinarily talented guitarist, and based on anecdotes from people who've met him or know him,  a pretty likable guy.  There's no doubting his enthusiasm for our guitar heroes.  He's just following his own musical vision.  I wish I could follow mine with as much skill as he does.

[Mr.OMuck]

You're dealing with a strange crew here at Weenie Ms.Lucy myself included...way included. First off you should know that while Robert Johnson isn't EXACTLY a dirty word around here, his name is usually attended by wailing & the gnashing of teeth. This is because of his whole anointment as King of the Delta Blues that John Hammond Sr. came up with and that locked Robert Johnson in the public's view as the one essential Blues musician. I don't think anybody on this forum seriously DISLIKES Johnson's music, its just that almost all of us feel there were other players who were perhaps more deserving of the kind of attention that Johnson's music and persona still garners. To the extent that Eric Clapton signed onto the RJ bandwagon whole hog so to speak and served to promote his "legend" even more, there is some resentment in the ranks of the cognoscenti. Also shades of RJ, Clapton has been anointed as a "guitar god" by many, while someone like Willie Johnson, Howlin' Wolf's first lead electric guitarist, and arguably the person who first deliberately used amp distortion, is relegated to the blank stare response bin. So since most on this forum are concerned with exploring the dark, overlooked corners of our musical legacy, discussions about Clapton or RJ don't always elicit the kind of response you might anticipate. Now just try mentioning Garfield Akers or Willie Walker ....

[Blue in VT]

I fall into the category mentioned above....without Clapton I would have never found my way to this music.  I almost never listen to him now....though Cream "Wheels of Fire" finds its way into my car stereo from time to time...but I still appreciate him tremendously and enjoy his older music quite a bit.

YMMV.

Blue

[Stuart]

The Rolling Stones covered it on "Beggar's Banquet" in 1968.

[Rivers]

I'm with O'Muck, couldn't have expressed it better. EC is, however, an exceptional lead electric player but even so, having been delving into Otis Rush's catalog lately, I'd have to say EC learned a lot if not most of his signature rounded phrasing from Rush.

Acoustically, EC is interesting. He does not play acoustic country blues like anyone else I can think of, particularly the right hand technique is very individual. I'd not go out of my way to copy what he does but it is different so I find that interesting. Sounds like damning with faint praise but it's not meant to be, good musicians and the way they play are a source of endless fascination.

Also interesting, several years ago I was dreading this topic coming up. Fabulous that we can discuss it so reasonably and amicably, we must have matured. You would have been handed a bunch of static 10 years ago for even invoking the "holy" EC initials on here! 

BTW while we're at it, I saw Clapton play a duo Cream set with Ginger Baker in 1969. Jack Bruce was indisposed and they played without a bassist. It was OK, and my first festival. Jeff Beck's band with Rod Stewart kinda blew them off the stage though. I got a lot of good stories from that festival.

[Mr.OMuck]

Actually it was Bloomfield who labled Clapton as "God". Sad really because I'll take Mike Bloomfield's playing any day over Clapton's. It was wild, wired and wonderfully expressive, in the true spirit of the Blues. The stuff he recorded with his Bobness remains the high water mark of second generation R&R guitar imo.

[Mr.OMuck]

Jimi Hendrix also did a stint as a sideman with the great Little Richard.

[unezrider]

hello friend,
i have to second o'muck on his "The stuff he recorded with his Bobness remains the high water mark of second generation R&R guitar imo." highway 61 revisited still is, & has been one of those albums showcasing what i think 'rock' guitar (notice i left out the '& roll') should sound like.
i grew up being told that clapton was as good as it gets when it comes to guitar playing. & i will say i think he's a tremendous player who knows his instrument. but after i started listening to wolf (& willie, & hubert), freddie king, rev. gary davis, django, blind lemon, etc? i found the "god" title to be slightly over stated. but if he wants to record his version of every single charlie patton song, (or whoever) i see nothing wrong with that. & sure it may not be as good as the original to us, but it keeps the music out there for people to hear. & i bet a lot of people would enjoy it. even if they don't know where the songs came from. or care to know.

[Filbert Cobb]

Well here's my five penn'orth

As far as I am concerned the big favour EC (and others, like Keef) did for me, when he was 19, was to wake people up to the good stuff. You have to remember that, even in the middle 60s, acoustic blues was hard to come by in the UK, unless you had money, dedication and access to specialist stores in central London. This was not the case for most kids of my age, even in South London, only a dozen miles away from the centre. It may surprise or appall you who grew up in the US that in UK at the time we had only one radio station (Luxembourg) that we could get which played anything other than the dross of the times - Beatles, Hollies, Searchers, Freddie and the Dreamers, Gerry and the Pacemakers (jeez!) - you get the picture. And to get Luxembourg the atmospherics had to be right! Eventually the BBC started putting on a weekly programme with some interesting stuff - I remember my entire collection created on my Dad's reel-to-reel consisted of King Biscuit Stomp (Big Joe W) and Diggin' my Potatoes (Washboard Sam). The result of EC et al stimulating a popular demand for acoustic blues, was that local high-street stores began to stock blues albums. But they didn't do it by playing it.

What grabbed my attention and made me a fan of EC was the sheer excitement generated by the Yardbirds re-creating Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry in a small back room in the Star in East Croydon on a Saturday night - at a pocket money price! See above for the popular alternatives of the times. No contest! EC was the stand-out member of that band. So when his references to Robert Johnson appeared in print, of course I started looking out for anything by RJ. I sat next to EC in the bar one night and clocked him reading the sleeve notes on the back of a Memphis Slim album - and went out and found one for myself quite quickly, but was hacked-off to find it was all piano. All that money for piano!! The lights went on at that point, I think. It wasn't the music that was grabbing me, it was the instrument.

Once I had proudly acquired a copy of RJ King of ... album, I realised that I didn't actually like his stuff much, but Hey! it must be good - EC and KR say so. To their credit, they didn't recycle the styles of their influential heroes, with the result that I very soon lost interest in contemporary blues artists and focused entirely on guitar, pre-1941. Maybe I would have got there anyway, who knows, but this is my recollection of how my interest started. I'm a Seaboard Stomp kind of a chap.

I have remained a fan of EC, without actually liking much of his post-Beano output. Frankly, I find it all rather dull. I bought his RJ release but played it only once. A friend of mine listened to a couple of tracks of it and then snapped the CD in two and threw it in the bin. I saw the EC/RJ documentary on TV which made me smile. The bit where he purports to stutter through number and explains how hard it is. Well, he should gone down to Bristol where he would find a brilliant RJ impersonation, far better than his, going on in every bar.

There is a big element of disappointment in this - he has never re-created the excitement of the Yardbird/Bluesbreakers era. There's no edge, it's all too safe. Of course, this is my personal perspective, so it is in fact nothing to do with EC. It's just me, I put my hands up, it's all my fault, as usual.

[Rivers]

Talking about this subject has always been doomed to going around in circles. EC is a good player. So are a lot of others. Life sometimes spotlights people more, or less, than they deserve, depending on your point of view. "Influence" is hard to prove. These are observable facts, and there's nothing new here, and not a lot to be gained spilling internet ink discussing it IMHO

Can we go back to acousticcountryblues++ now?

[Rambler]

"could anybody shed some light on the Clapton-Grossman connection? ."

My understanding is that Stefan G lived in England for a spell in the mid-60s and hung with Clappers. No so sure there was any instruction going on, but certainly trading licks.  Btw I'd say there is more to Stefan G than archival work. Check out some of his solo work and his duets with John Renborn. 

[Mr.OMuck]

Sorry Lucy but I ain't buyin' it! Everyone has a fondness for the one that brought them to the dance but in the case of EC I don't feel that the things you attribute to him, namely depth of feeling & poetry are noticeably present in any great degree and certainly not more so than any number of other performers many of us could name. I see no reason outside of his celebrity, better haircut & clothes and famous and interesting friends to prefer EC over Grossman for example. If anything Grossman is a more adventurous, if less polished and charismatic musician. Then there are people like John Hammond, Ry Cooder, Paul Geremia, Frankie Basile, Del Rey, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Joe Belulovitch, Pat Conte, Ari Eisenger, John Miller, Mamie Minch,  and many others who can deliver this music with a skill and feeling that EC can't match, and not in a dry academic sense either. I agree with JohnM That EC's best stuff is as a Rock guitarist and I really dig the Yardbirds and some of his work with Cream. Perhaps as you listen to more of what's available to you through this forum you will add other qualities to your criteria.
I don't see any equating of EC with Billie Holiday and certainly not VanGogh as being at all persuasive or even useful, but hey that's just me

[eric]

Re: Stefan & Eric - paraphrasing what I remember from attending one of Stefan's workshops - he hung with the Clapster for a fair amount of time during his English years, the mid sixties, trading licks with Eric and others.  This was in the context of Stefan demonstrating to us the stuff he learned from the electric guys, for example the left hand tremolo with the finger moving parallel to the frets.

One other thing:  with a few exceptions, the true chicken-skin music I've heard over the years has involved small gatherings, some professional, some not.  Oddly, it didn't have anything to do with the particular style of music.  Could be Christopher Parkening, could be Los Tigres del Norte.  Live music is just so utterly different from recordings...

Got off topic there - sorry.

[blueshome]

  Is it over yet? Can I look?

[Parlor Picker]

Is it over yet? Can I look?

I like it!

I'm confused - all these references to John Miller and the poor bloke hasn't even contributed to this thread.

BTW - no way is Ry Cooder sterile, the rhythm just drops off the man.

[Rambler]

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but ... Ry Cooder, sterile?  You dont have to like his stuff, but the last think I'd call his work is cool or clinical (my words, not yours, but synon in my mind for sterile).  Especially with slide, which is very much a matter of touch and feeling.

[Rivers]

Putting on my moderator hat, could we all please try to keep this civil or I predict it will be locked at some point. Thank you very much.

I'm moving this to the other musical interests forum since it doesn't have a lot to do with country blues at this point.

[Rivers]

Locked.