Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton

Description

Deluxe edition: This album is the best British blues record ever recorded. And this record is a perfect object. In the front cover photo, we see four guys, natural in their everyday outfits, even casual (Clapton reading comics, looking elsewhere), contrasting with the stiff poses of bands from that era. What do bassist John McVie (destined for a golden path with Fleetwood Mac), drummer Hughie Flint (destined for good music with the band McGuiness Flint), a proclaimed guitar god Eric Clapton, caught between the hysteria of the Yardbirds and that of Cream, and a John Mayall as a boss, already absolutely old in the eyes of the time (33 years) tell us? That blues, unlike pop, does not concern itself with glitter and has roots (here, some borrowings from Mose Allison or Willie Dixon and, above all, the shadow of Buddy Guy throughout). And that the music these four musicians (Alan Skidmore and John Almond came to blow into their saxophones, Dennis Healey on his trumpet, but they did not get to be featured in the photos) chose to offer to young, spotty Englishmen has a different depth than the fleeting choruses of the charts. We naturally evolve here in the world of standards, in the universe of codes, for a music perfectly honed on stage (1966 is certainly the glorious year of the Bluesbreakers). And this recording is clearly designed as a triumphant march for Eric Clapton, who plays a lot, very well, and very prominently (nevertheless supported by an imperial rhythm section and a particularly relevant John Mayall on second guitar and organ). He even tries his hand at lead singing - which is not completely necessary. The highlight: the whole is produced, in an almost ascetic simplicity that many have tried in vain to approach, by Mike Vernon, who can simply be considered the pope of British blues (Fleetwood Mac and Ten Years After, that's him, but also David Bowie).