Clapton Back at Crossroads

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"I should have done it a long time ago," says Eric Clapton about his tribute to the man who first inspired him to pick up a guitar, Robert Johnson. The album, titled Me and Mr. Johnson, is due March 23rd.

Clapton -- whose first lead vocal was a 1966 rendition of Johnson's "Ramblin' on My Mind" with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers -- says he fell in love with the Johnson collection King of the Delta Blues Singers when it came out in 1961; most of the tracks on Me and Mr. Johnson are drawn from that album.

With a band that includes Billy Preston on keyboards and Andy Fairweather-Low and Doyle Bramhall II on guitars, Clapton swaggers through low-key renditions of "Milkcow's Calf Blues," "Hellhound on My Trail" and "32-20 Blues."

"Johnson's style was so complicated that it usually takes two people to copy his sound," says Clapton. "I've always found it necessary to delegate parts of his arrangements to other musicians."

Clapton's favorite track is "Kindhearted Woman Blues." "It was so gentle," he says of the original. "Blind Willie Johnson, Charley Patton and Son House were all rough-sounding guys. Robert Johnson wasn't able to mask his vulnerability."

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Song Stories

“Everyday People”

Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

More Song Stories entries »

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