Eric Clapton came by the blues honestly

Born today in 1945, Eric Clapton grew up in a small village in depressed postwar England. As a child, he learned that the elderly couple raising him were not his parents but his grandparents. His real father had abandoned him at birth and gone home to Quebec. His “older sister” was in fact his mother, but she had already remarried and left the country, too.

In his misery, Clapton had plenty of company. War had made many families fatherless. National morale plummeted as the empire disintegrated, the economy faltered and the prospect of nuclear annihilation loomed.

By the bleak early ’60s, Clapton had taken up the guitar and joined the blues subculture, a small tribe that sought solace from the woes of modern Britain in music from a different country, an earlier generation and another race — a unique folk genre developed by African Americans in the rural Deep South between the world wars. Disdaining what they regarded as the artifice of rock and jazz, Clapton and his peers heard in the blues the purest possible distillation of human pain and beauty. Like musical archaeologists, they vied to unearth old and obscure records, to track the blues from smoky bars in Chicago and St. Louis back to the juke joints and bayous of the prewar Mississippi Delta. They listened intently, striving to unlock the musical secrets of forgotten and long-dead bluesmen in an endless quest for authenticity.

“Clapton is God” graffiti — testament to his guitar prowess — began to appear around London, but his devotees had to stay on their toes, because he changed groups often. Slowhand quit the Yardbirds after just 18 months when the band ditched blues for pop in emulation of the Beatles. Disgruntled, he spent 15 months (on and off) with fellow purist John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers, with whom Clapton learned to compose (“Bernard Jenkins”) and sing (“Ramblin’ on My Mind”).

In the summer of 1966, Slowhand joined Cream, a “super group” of ringers — a power trio whose output ranged from psychedelic rock (“Sunshine of Your Love”) to pop (“Badge”) to the blues, including two fine Robert Johnson covers: “From Four Until Late” and “Crossroads.”

After three years, Clapton grew tired of playing “maestro bullshit” with Cream and resumed his quixotic quest for musical authenticity, careening erratically among projects and genres. After perpetrating acid folk-rock fusion with Steve Winwood in Blind Faith (“Presence of the Lord”), he cut a soulful solo album (“After Midnight”), and then formed a band called Derek and the Dominoes, with whom he recorded the epic, immortal “Layla.” Inexplicably left on the cutting room floor by producer Tom Dowd was a brilliant rendition of “Mean Old World” which — like “Layla” — featured Slowhand playing with the equally brilliant Duane Allman.

Since 1974, Clapton has recorded as a solo artist. He helped popularize reggae with his cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff,” but the best track from 461 Ocean Boulevard is “Motherless Children,” pitting tragic lyrics against the jaunty menace of a rousing blues-rock beat. Later in the ’70s, Slowhand dabbled successfully in country with “Lay Down Sally” and “Promises.” After a prolonged slump, he came back strong in the mid-’80s, settling into a steady groove with the pop-friendly “Forever Man” and his finest album, August (1986). Although marred in places by a dated ’80s sound, the LP includes standout tracks like the scorching “Miss You,” the elegiac “Holy Mother” and “Tearing Us Apart,” a satisfying duet with Tina Turner.

Clapton peaked in the late ’80s and early ’90s and cashed in with a beer commercial, an excellent boxed set, a new pop offering (Journeyman) and several big live albums, including a notable performance on MTV Unplugged.

Since then, he has faded into relative obscurity. He has cut several nostalgic albums, including collaborations with JJ Cale and BB King, reunions with Cream and Winwood, and loving tributes to Cale and Robert Johnson. His finest recent recordings include “Gotta Get Over” and “Lies.”

Along the way, Clapton laid down some outstanding session work for the Beatles (“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”), George Harrison (“My Sweet Lord”), Phil Collins (“I Wish It Would Rain Down”) and others. (Warning: No matter how much you like Clapton and Pink Floyd, avoid The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. On that 1984 solo album, Roger Waters squandered an all-star cast of musicians by enlisting them in a criminal conspiracy against the human ear and spirit. It demonstrates the unwisdom of granting any artist total creative control, and explains why — without the good taste and musical inventiveness of David Gilmour — Waters always fell short outside of Floyd.)