Jazz Articles about Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton: Prototype of the Guitar Hero

by Doug Collette
February 20, 2005

Eric Clapton Disraeli Gears (with Cream) 461 Ocean Blvd. Layla (with Derek & The Dominos) Universal Music Enterprises 2004

With the reformation of Cream looming for later this year, it's well to ponder how Eric Clapton became the archetypal guitar hero of our times. A series of reissues including some of his most significant work illustrate his checkered yet influential past and in so doing give some insight into how ...

John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers: 70th Birthday Concert

by Doug Collette
May 9, 2004

John Mayall’s concerts of recent years can seem somewhat ritualized and to some extent this double CD of a show in Liverpool, England celebrating his 70th (!) is no exception. But the venerable British bluesman, excited himself about the occasion, demonstrates his long-standing ability to meld musicians into cohesive units and thereby coax consummate musicianship from the individuals within the group.

This is pure wizardry—and perhaps there’s no better word for it considering Mayall's longevity as well as the personnel ...

Eric Clapton: Me and Mr. Johnson

by C. Michael Bailey
April 9, 2004

Eric Clapton Me and Mr. Johnson Reprise/Duck In the same way that Louis Armstrong was at center of the genesis of Jazz in the 1920s, so was Eric Clapton at the center of the British Blues invasion of the 1960s. Between 1965 and 1970, in turn, Clapton was a member of the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, and Derek and the Dominoes. And this was all before ...

Eric Clapton: Me and Mr. Johnson

by Doug Collette
April 6, 2004

Once proclaiming himself a blues purist when he quit the Yardbirds to maintain his loyalty to the genre by joining John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Eric Clapton has morphed over the years into a most careerist musician. Yet the absolutely prosaic quality of so much of that music, including his last live album One More Car, One More Rider , cannot in any way lessen the profound impact Clapton has had on modern blues. Unfortunately, Me & Mr. Johnson does little to ...