CLASSIC ALBUM SERIES #15: Eric Clapton - From The Cradle

by Tom Caswell: https://tomcaswell.net/2017/04/01/classic-album-series-15-eric-clapton-from-the-cradle/

Eric Clapton Rotterdam June 23, 1978 (Wikipedia)

For the 15th instalment of my CLASSIC ALBUM SERIES I turn to Eric Clapton’s incredible 1994 album From The Cradle, an album which saw him return to electric blues with one hell of a bang.

Two years earlier Clapton had recorded and released his Unplugged live album which contained a number of high quality acoustic blues performances and From The Cradle certainly expanded on his return to the blues.

The album opens with a fantastic version of the Leroy Carr song Blues Before Sunrise with influence taken from the Elmore James version. 

It’s a roaring rendition which certainly sets the tone for the rest of the album with Eric playing slide guitar, something he doesn’t usually do but has done occasionally over the years. He sounds great here and plays with authority, classic Clapton. 

The Willie Dixon song Third Degree comes next which sees Clapton supply some tasteful blues kicks throughout. It’s a slow blues number and Chris Stainton also plays some great piano here which compliments Eric’s playing exquisitely. 

But it’s perhaps the Lowell Fusion number Reconsider Baby where Eric really hits his stride. From a personal point of view it’s my favourite song on the album and it’s difficult to think of the last time Eric played the blues so perfectly before this. It’s a performance that was captured live on Later … with Jools Holland when Eric made an appearance on the show in 1995 and you can tell that Eric really gets into it, and the same can be said for the studio version here. It is absolutely stunning and reminds you that even after the multiple rock albums since 1970, he is primarily a blues guitarist. And one of the all time best.

1. Blues Before Sunrise
2. Third Degree
3. Reconsider Baby
4. Hoochie Coochie Man
5. Five Long Years
6. I’m Tore Down
7. How Long Blues
8. Goin’ Away Baby
9. Blues Leave Me Alone
10. Sinner’s Prayer
11. Motherless Child
12. It Hurts Me Too
13. Someday After A While
14. Standin’ Around Crying
15. Driftin’
16. Groaning The Blues

Hoochie Coochie Man comes next and the band as a whole really sound great here. It’s a song that has been covered by a wide range of artists over the years and it’s perhaps this version that has inspired blues bands and performers since it’s release on this album. I know it has with me. 

The great Five Long Years is the fifth song on the album and Eric really goes off here both vocally and on guitar. His guitar playing is explosive to say the least and on vocals he gives one of his finest performances on the whole album. It’s a great song which was originally recorded by Eddie Boyd in 1952 and hugely satisfying to listen to with Eric supplying some great guitar playing, something this album has in abundance.

The Sonny Thompson penned track I’m Tore Down is a song that was originally performed by the great Freddie King, a huge influence of Clapton dating back to when he first took up the guitar. It was of course Freddie King’s album Let’s Hide Away And Dance Away that was hugely influential on Clapton upon its release in 1962.

The acoustically driven How Long Blues follows the electrifying I’m Tore Down and sees Clapton in a more laid back mood, showing that the blues isn’t always fast paced Chicago Blues numbers. It’s the second Leroy Carr song on the album after the opener and features some great harmonica playing from Jerry Portnoy who had previously toured with the legendary Muddy Waters. His harmonica paired with Eric’s slide guitar and Stainton on piano results in a beautifully delivered song.

Goin’ Away Baby follows and again features Portnoy on harmonica where he mimics Clapton’s vocal lines while also performing a really good solo towards the end. Blues Leave Me Alone is a slow shuffle blues with forceful drumming and sees Eric deliver yet another fine vocal display. He’s obviously known mostly for his guitar playing but there’s no doubt that he’s become one of the finest blues singers the genre has ever seen, and this song captures him at his very best. 

Sinner’s Prayer features one of my favourite Clapton guitar tones on this album. It’s thick, muddy, and overdriven. Perfect for the kind of blues the album contains. The next song, Motherless Child, is my least favourite song on this album although it’s probably the most well known. It’s an ok song but for me personally I prefer the kind of blues that features in the next song, It Hurts Me Too. 

Just like Blues Before Sunrise, Eric takes on slide guitar duties and blows everything away in the process. There’s footage of him and his band playing this song on tour which shows the Gibson guitar he plays slide on, but it’s perhaps this studio version here that features the better tone which is certainly more focused. His slide playing here is phenomenal and from a personal point of view it’s a song, and a performance, that inspired me to start playing slide too. 

Another Freddie King song comes next in the form of Someday After A While and there’s no doubt that Clapton is at his very best when playing Freddie King songs. He nails it every time. There were a number of other King songs he played while touring this album, often played consecutively, and his playing on all of them is up there with the best guitar playing he has ever done. And Someday After A While is no exception.

Standin’ Around Crying by Muddy Waters is the third to last song and it’s a great rendition of a classic song. A slow blues number, the whole band sound fantastic here with the harmonica being one of the standout parts. 

Things then turn acoustic for the last time on the album with Driftin’, a song and a performance that could have been taken from his Unplugged album two years earlier. In a live setting this song would turn into an electric beast with the running time extended to 8 minutes or more while also including multiple key changes. But here it’s a 3 minutes acoustic blues track and sounds great for it. Simple, basic, pure acoustic blues. 

To end the album Eric turns thing up to 10 with a roaring rendition of Groaning The Blues. Vocally he is a man possessed here, ending the album on a high. His guitar playing dominates the song as well. There are a number of songs that are more band songs on the album but here, to end the album, it’s all Eric. The rest of the band take a back seat and let him do his thing the way only he could.

In terms of impact it’s a fantastic blues album and in many ways, in regards to his playing, it’s a perfect successor to the Bluesbreaker album he released with John Mayall in 1966. His blues playing here is absolutely incredible and showed the world and his doubters that Eric Clapton is, was and always will be a GOD.

Watch Janis Joplin’s Breakthrough Performance at the Monterey Pop Festival: “One of the Great Concert Performances of all Time” (1967)

by Ted Mills, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2017/03/watch-janis-joplins-breakthrough-performance-at-the-monterey-pop-festival.html

“No one to that point had seen a White girl sing the blues like she sang it. And she was a tough Texas girl, she lived really tough, she drank tough, she did drugs, too many and too tough. But as a vocalist, her performance at Monterey was also one of the great concert performances of all time.”

That’s famed music and film producer Lou Adler talking in 2007 about Janis Joplin and her performance 40 years before at the Monterey International Pop Festival. After those three days of music (June 16-June 18, 1967) in the Summer of Love, many of the acts catapulted to fame.

The Who exploded stateside, The Jimi Hendrix Experience essentially launched their career from that stage, Ravi Shankar got introduced to Americans, and Otis Redding played to a mostly white audience for the first time. Laura Nyro and Canned Heat became famous overnight.

And then there was Big Brother and the Holding Company, fronted by a 24 year-old Janis Joplin. Their first album wasn’t due until August, and most of the crowd had not heard of this blues band when they took the stage on Saturday afternoon, June 17. Five songs later, and finishing with “Ball and Chain,” the crowd had gone wild. They knew they had seen something special.

But D.A. Pennebaker, the documentarian behind Dylan’s Don’t Look Back and Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” concert films, had not filmed the set. In an unprecedented move, Joplin and band were invited back to recreate the set the following evening - the only band to do two sets at the festival - and that is the footage seen above. Joplin’s performance is just as good, maybe even better, though the Sunday performance does not feature James Gurley’s extended guitar solo. That version can be found here.

Not only did Monterey Pop launched several careers, it legitimized the idea that rock music was mature and important enough to have its own festival, just like the worlds of jazz and folk. For organizers Adler, along with John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, Alan Pariser, and Beatles publicist Derek Taylor, it was a huge success. Two years later a little gathering called Woodstock went even further. And the rest as they say is … whoever’s headlining Coachella this year.

If you enjoy this footage, you will want to pick up a copy of the film, The Complete Monterey Pop Festival, from the Criterion Collection. 

Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the artist interview-based FunkZone Podcast and is the producer of KCRW’s Curious Coast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, read his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.