Rock Bassist Hoped Supergroup Would Succeed at 'Re-Writing the Blues'

Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, and Ginger Baker made the supergroup Cream. The British group didn’t last long and the music artists went their separate ways. Bruce revealed one of their issues and it’s that they had different goals. His was changing a genre.

Jack Bruce Wanted Cream to Rewrite the Blues

Cream formed in 1966 and Clapton already made a name for himself in blues with the Yardbirds and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. Bruce told Record Collector in 2007 that his goals were different from the other bandmates.

“I didn’t have a great knowledge of blues music, or certainly Delta blues, which is what we started out interpreting,” the bassist said. “So I had to change a lot, to simplify in some ways and to become interested in new things.” He hoped that after he learned they would invent something new.

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“I was full of very big ideas about what we could do – re-writing the blues, if you like – and in a way that’s what we tried to do,” he later said. “It sounds a bit presumptuous to say that, but I felt there was the possibility of a new kind of musical language with that band, and with the spirit of the 60s we all felt that we could reinvent everything, and start afresh, including music.”

Bruce said the three of them never discussed their goals as a group when it came to genre or songwriting. Cream is largely associated with rock.

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Eric Clapton Fell in Love With the Blues Because of a Kids Radio Show

Delta blues originated in Mississippi and relies on the guitar and harmonica. The genre is forever connected to Southern Black American culture. So how did an English boy become connected to it? A children’s radio show called “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” Sometimes the host, Uncle Mac played the Blues.

“I don’t know what this guy was on; I can’t imagine how it would get snuck in, whether it was his taste or someone else’s, his wife, who knows?” Clapton told NPR in 2007.

Muddy Waters, who went from Stovall plantation to working full-time as a musician in Chicago, inspired Clapton. “Honey Bee” is a song Clapton often turned to because of the guitar technique and practice playing it.

Albert King played the instrument upside down because he was left handed. Clapton later befriended Waters and called him “the father figure I never really had.”

After Cream, Clapton played with more groups. He settled in with Derek and the Dominos and Cream later temporarily reunited in 2005 after they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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