CASE MEMORIAL LIBRARY CALL NUMBER:
CD/ROCK/ClaptonARTIST WEBSITE:
http://www.ericclapton.com/People wrote: "Everybody knows that Eric Clapton can do blues, but on
Back Home -- his first album of original material since 2001 -- Slowhand displays a sure hand with other forms of black music like R&B, reggae and even a bit of gospel. Clapton, who hit No. 1 in 1974 with his cover of Bob Marley's 'I Shot the Sheriff,' gets back in a reggae riddim with the first single 'Revolution' (featuring Bob's son
Stephen Marley on percussion). Elsewhere he revisits '70s R&B, putting his own twist on the Spinners' 'Love Don't Love Nobody' and doing a nice turn on Syreeta's 'I'm Going Left.' And on tracks such as the Vince Gill-cowritten 'One Day,' he employs gospel-infused backup vocals, proving that soul knows no color."
Clapton must have had a busy year in 2005, what with the
Cream reunion concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, captured in an excellent 2-disc set (CD/ROCK/Cream).
Update, 11/25/06. Ian Whitcomb wrote in
Rock Odyssey (
784.54/W): "One of the earliest patrons of 'I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet' had been Eric Clapton. He liked to wear uniforms around the house as he ran blues licks up and down his fretboard at over 500 m.p.h. Blues was his survival food and he'd left the Yardbirds because they veered away from the basics and onto pop fodder like 'For Your Love'" (p. 229). "In January [1967], there exploded onto the charts two new acts … rooted in the blues … Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Cream were what their name dictated — the cream of the British R&B instrumentalists. They sang as if they had a built-in tremulo lever, and their single 'I Feel Free' was racing up the charts. Jack Bruce, bass, and Ginger Baker, drums, had both been in the London R&B band of Graham Bond. Eric Clapton (also known as 'God') had recently been with John Mayall's Blues Breakers, a band that stuck religiously to the true blues canon, and before that he'd been a Yardbird. These three top players constituted the first supergroup and when they were good they were very, very good — but when they were bad they were a horrid cacophony. …" (p. 288)
