73. John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers — Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (1966)
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2 min readJul 16, 2020
- Some good old fashioned straightforward blues rock right here. I enjoy myself some blues, though I’ll be honest, I prefer more updated variations on it. Traditional blues? Eminently listenable but never that thrilling on record; high floor, low ceiling. But if you’re going to give me blues standards, at least give me a genius performing them on guitar, as we have here with Eric Clapton. And Clapton’s sound is iconic, without a doubt.
- It’s a bit wild to hear how quickly a white man took on and popularized the mantle of BB King’s blues sound. Clapton is, again, an unquestioned genius; but I’m struck by the increasing whiteness of this list as the earlier blues/rock/r&B sound (King, Little Richard, Fats Domino) gets co-opted and popularized. Yes, I of course knew this happened; what’s interesting is realizing how quickly it happened, which is harder to contextualize without a list like this.
- One thing this album does really well is capture a live feeling in a studio environment. You can feel Clapton and Mayall playing off of each other; you can feel the band’s energy as songs jump into new time signatures and tempos. It’s a bunch of dudes who really love the blues playing the blues extremely well. It’s enjoyable!
- Eric Clapton was such a free agent back in the day; he left Yardbirds for the Bluesbreakers because he evidently wanted a more pure blues experience, which he absolutely got. Within a year of recording this album, he moved on to form Cream. Slow down, Eric!
One Essential Song:
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