And Clapton Didn't Even Know


In one of the many tributes to Ornette Coleman I came across the following comment from Jack Bruce regarding Cream. "(Cream) was an Ornette Coleman band, with Eric [Clapton] not knowing he was Ornette Coleman, Ginger [Baker] and me not telling him."

Wow! I was blind, but now I see.
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Marty, McVie is on the cover and on the record: The band on this album includes Mayall on piano, Hammond organ, harmonica and most vocals; bassist John McVie; drummer Hughie Flint; and Clapton. Augmenting the band on this album was a horn section added during post-production[citation needed], with Alan Skidmore, Johnny Almond, and Derek Healey (misrepresented on the sleeve as 'Dennis Healey'). (from Wikipedia)
Clapton was very confused about what he wanted musically prior to getting off drugs and alcohol. He has sometimes been reluctant to really play his guitar much on his recordings. Other times he has been quoted, in his autobiography, that he liked it when they said Clapton is God.
That may be true--however, the music discussed here is from the 60s. His addiction was in the 70s.
I was a Dylan freak from 1964 to whenever I lost touch with his stuff (meh), so I was stoked to see him and The Hawks (Band sans Levon) in 1966. A life changing event musically for my soft 15 year old brain, and the loudest thing I'd seen up 'till then as most Big Deal bands simply used the "house" PA…these guys had piles of Altec A7s and were substantially more substantial. A cool thing about the Big Pink and The Band albums was the relative mysteriousness surrounding these guys, along with their utterly original production of what would now be called "Americana." That's what blew my generation of musicians away…songs that seemed to be carved from logs and performed with gusto with 3 lead singers. Hell yeah…After the Band my fave (and the fave of people like Zep and the Stones) became Little Feat for pretty much the same reasons…roots deep in the mud of what came before with supercharged musicianship.