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Well, it went like this. I heard this LP at a party in the 70's (after buying "Crusade" due to the fact that it had Mick Taylor on guitar when I was devoted to everything Rolling Stones). It didn't grab me the way "Crusade" did, so I never did buy my own copy.
Then I became a huge Yardbirds fan, but at that time, my ears were telling me that Jeff Beck was the man who stormed away with the guitar-playing crown (Jimmy Page didn't really impress me until that first Led Zeppelin LP, which is still in my top 10 favorites of all time).
So what about this guy Clapton? Okay, okay, he seemed kind of uh, generic, bland, uh, and OKAY let me hang my head in shame while cutting to the chase and admit I WAS WRONG. Through a series of events that I won't bore you with here, I started to listen to the man's guitar on various records, make that re-listen, and woooo. Did I miss the boat, but in all humility my ears were not seasoned enough and I did not have the maturity to hear what I now hear in this record...
Make that CD, and make that plural because I was fortunate enough to decide to rediscover this music at a time when the good people of Amazon are offering up the 2-CD DELUXE EDITION which includes both STEREO and MONO mixes of the original LP (impressive differences between the two, and I have never just played one without immediately playing the other, THEY ARE THAT GOOD), plus some very complimentary bonus tracks (19 total !!! not counting the stereo/mono tracks !!!), most of which are INDISPENSABLE to this era of The Blues Breakers, this concentrated period of their incredible run of historic integrity under the watchful ear of legendary founder John Mayall.
My current opinion about Eric Clapton is that he was/is not about flash, though he was capable of it (and I love the moments on Cream records where he reminds me that he was both lead and rhythm guitarist in that power trio which was writing and playing songs in the thick of psychedelia), he is CORE. Hot Blues molten core. He was first among his generation's finest young blues guitarists, and even guys like Jeff Beck used his blueprint as a launching pad, but it remains evident that Eric loved the Blues so much that he kept a reverence to his playing that, while not progressive, was of a purity that can be deceiving (to young taste-challenged lunkheads like I was at the time I first heard this record).
The booklet that comes with this set is thick with info, features great period photos, and I just can't say enough about how impressed I am with how this package was put together so I will shut up and let it call you home.
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Disappointed
The CD's appear to be in excellent shape. I was not expecting the media case to be, essentially, ruined.The inside of the opened case (book format, with flaps covering the CD's) has been peeled/ripped off.I do not remember the description stating this condition. I did not expect it to be perfect, but I certainly did not expect this.If the description did state this condition, I missed it (but cannot look it up - and I did not take a screen shot).I am, however, happy with the condition of the CD's.
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forgottenglory
Year Zero For The Modern Electric Guitar Sound
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 16, 2024
forgottenglory
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 16, 2024
With enough water under the bridge, it is easy to forget how different the electric guitar sounded before the advent of this album. The sounds of the electric guitar of the 50s and early 60s combined the tremolo bar technique, a clean tone, and the twangy enunciation of individual notes as popularised by artists such as Link Wray, Duane Eddy, The Ventures, and The Shadows.
Eric Clapton had been honing his guitar tone since his tenure with The Yardbirds. By the time he joined the Bluesbreakers, his tone had matured into a fuller and more powerful sound. The revolutionary tone was achieved by coupling Clapton's Gibson Les Paul "Beano Burst" with the then-novel Marshall amps.
The "Beano" album (Clapton is pictured reading a Beano magazine on the cover), as "John Mayall and Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton" came to be known colloquially, is a compendium of traditional American blues songs reinterpreted by Eric Clapton, who stamped his singular English mark on them, and interspersed with original compositions that blend in seamlessly.
The debate about what is "authentic" blues has been raging for years. In "Waiting For Buddy Guy - Chicago Blues At The Crossroads", author Alan Harper weighed in on the debate of what constitutes "authentic" blues in the pseudo condescending chapter, "Can Blue Men Sing The Whites?". Assessing both sides of the fence: those who staunchly believed only black people could legitimately play the blues, which they experienced through hardship in contrast to the whites who learned the blues by listening to records, Alan Harper concluded that neither colour nor content dictates authenticity. It does not matter who plays the blues as long as the music is played earnestly. The so-called authenticity that purists clamoured for was ascribed to that "crucial extra depth of emotional content and feeling" that inherently permeates the works of black bluesmen.
The bigotry of purists with their ludicrous and subjective criteria for "authenticity" has been responsible for stunting the evolution of genres. The blues is no exception. It is hard to be objective when a genre is in full swing. But only as it becomes history can the impact of the protagonists be appreciated without prejudice.
We are now removed far enough in time to appreciate the white players' contribution, which has outgrown their reinterpretation of the rural acoustic Mississippi Delta blues and the plangent urban electric blues of Chicago to find their own voices. When asked how he felt about the whites stealing from him, Buddy Guy graciously proffered that nobody stole from anybody since everybody has to learn from somebody.
With Blues Breakers, Eric Clapton proved that the whites could also play the blues. Not only did Clapton make his Les Paul wail, but he redefined the sound of the electric guitar and subsequently informed the tone of guitar players on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Deluxe Edition includes the raw 1966 mono mix followed by the 1969 relatively polished but equally enticing stereo version on disc 1. Disc 2 consists of 19 tracks, which include previously unreleased tracks, live performances, and various sessions. Both discs demonstrate how Eric Clapton and the equally talented Bluesbreakers assiduously studied the blues, reverentially paid respect to the black bluesmen they learned from, and graduated with honours from the "Chicago School of Blues".
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