Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton

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Performer: Bluesbreakers/Eric Clapton/John Mayall/John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers
Distributor: Select-O-Hits

Notes: Full performer name: John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers. John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers: John Mayall (vocals, piano, organ, harmonica); Eric Clapton (vocals, guitar); John McVie (bass); Hughie Flint (drums). Additional personnel: Alan Skidmore (tenor saxophone); John Almond (baritone saxophone); Dennis Healey (trumpet). Includes original release liner notes by Neil Slaven & reissue liner notes by Paul Trynka. Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton was Eric Clapton's first fully realized album as a blues guitarist -- more than that, it was a seminal blues album of the 1960s, perhaps the best British blues album ever cut, and the best LP ever recorded by John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Standing midway between Clapton's stint with the Yardbirds and the formation of Cream, this album featured the new guitar hero on a series of stripped-down blues standards, Mayall pieces, and one Mayall/Clapton composition, all of which had him stretching out in the idiom for the first time in the studio. This album was the culmination of a very successful year of playing with John Mayall, a fully realized blues creation, featuring sounds very close to the group's stage performances, and with no compromises. Credit has to go to producer Mike Vernon for the purity and simplicity of the record; most British producers of that era wouldn't have been able to get it recorded this way, much less released. One can hear the very direct influence of Buddy Guy and a handful of other American bluesmen in the playing. And lest anyone forget the rest of the quartet: future pop/rock superstar John McVie and drummer Hughie Flint provide a rock-hard rhythm section, and Mayall's organ playing, vocalizing, and second guitar are all of a piece with Clapton's work. His guitar naturally dominates most of this record, and he can also be heard taking his first lead vocal, but McVie and Flint are just as intense and give the tracks an extra level of steel-strung tension and power, none of which have diminished across several decades. [In 1998, Polygram Records issued a remastered version of this album on CD, featuring both the stereo and mono mixes of the original tracks and new notes.] ~ Bruce Eder 1966's BLUESBREAKERS WITH ERIC CLAPTON is full of portent, as some of its participants would become superstars after its release. Future Cream guitarist Eric Clapton was highly rated enough in the UK blues-rock scene to score second billing, but it wasn't until this recording that he'd had the opportunity to truly stretch out in the studio and show off his awesome soloing skills. Clapton's earlier stint in the Yardbirds had found his ideas largely shouted down by pop-oriented producer/manager Giorgio Gomelsky, but here kindred spirit/producer Mike Vernon simply let Clapton play as he wished. The sympathetic rhythm section of Hughie Flint and future Fleetwood Mac founder John McVie, along with Mayall's best-ever vocals and organ, make BLUESBREAKERS WITH ERIC CLAPTON one of the all-time great British blues albums.

Q (p.156) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[T]his was the record that sealed his guitar-hero status and, for the first time, put a blues album in the UK Top 10." Q - Recommended Down Beat (8/95, p.55) - 4.5 Stars - Very Good/Excellent - "...Clapton displays enough control and buoyant enthusiasm in his playing to justify the scrawling of `Clapton is God' on London walls....Mayall, meantime, explores the upper range of his pale voice with urgency and conviction..." Musician (4/95, p.76) - "...Clapton blazes with a maturity beyond his years, and his tone pierces and rumbles with a freedom he's rarely evoked since....shows how even the greats can be elevated by the right rhythm section..."

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