Eric Clapton on J.J. Cale

LIttle Feat and The Band shared a mutual admiration for each other. When Levon Helm came through Los Angeles in 2000 and played at The House Of Blues, Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward joined him on stage. Levon was recovering from throat surgery that removed a cancer (big smoker, he later died from lung cancer), and wasn’t singing, but had daughter Amy Helm along to provide vocals for the mainly-Chicago Blues he was playing on that tour. Levon and Richie obviously loved each other as musical brothers.

When Levon’s autobiography was released, he did an in-store book signing appearance at Book Soup, directly across the street from Tower Records on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. Ringo Starr, a huge Levon Helm fan, was there, getting his copy autographed.

I did not know that onhwy61, good to hear. I have a collection of The 5 Royales, I’ll have to give it a fresh listen. Another influence on all the Tele players is Paul Burlinson of The Rock ’n’ Roll Trio (Johnny and Dorsey Burnette, along with Paul). His playing is SO wicked, and their version of "Train Kept A-Rollin" is absolutely incendiary! Jeff Beck is a big fan of him and them.

I like and appreciate showmanship, and really like musicians who "make it look easy". When I saw The Collins Kids at The Palomino in the 90’s, Larry Collins unfortunately took it too far, putting on a contrived, calculated, "Vegas"-style performance. Corny. I played one show with Don & Dewey (label-mates with Little Richard on Specialty Records) in the late 90’s in L.A., and Dewey was a great performer, sort of Chuck Berry-ish. Good singer too, and Don (Sugarcane Harris) was a riot, stoned out-of-his-mind!

whart, I realize different people want different things from their musicians, even from music itself. That’s fine with me, I am just making the case for my taste. I have come to realize people generally judge musicianship more as an athletic event than an artistic one.

I was raving to my sister’s husband (at the time blind, now dead ;-) about the two little drum breaks (especially the second) Don Lamond plays in Bobby Darin’s "Beyond The Sea", my favorite drum "solo". I played the song for him, and afterwards he dissected the drum breaks in terms of the difficulty in performing them---how hard the part was to play. I was once again reminded that I listen for something completely different than do some others. I don’t judge a part in terms of how easy or hard it is to play, but by how good it SOUNDS. Who cares whether it’s easy or hard to play?! The point is, Lamond’s solo is incredibly clever (with a delicious sense of humour, rare in drumming, early Keith Moon excluded), very original, and ultracool. And highly musical, ta boot. Isn’t THAT what’s it’s all about?

@onhwy61, I understand what you’re saying. But it’s not simply a matter of taste, it’s playing what is required to achieve a desired effect. A couple of examples: A lot of people know the song "Shakin’ All Over" from The Who’s version on the Live At Leeds album. I heard that version when it came out, but unfortunately for The Who (;-) had already heard the 1965 version by-----ready for it?-----The Guess Who! Their version absolutely smokes The Who’s version, hard as that may be to believe. That Guess Who line-up was the original, pre-Burton Cummings one, and they create the most intense level of tension-and-release I’ve ever heard, from any band. The Who’s version is all release, without the requisite tension first created, tension which makes the release so, ahem, satisfying. And then there are Daltry’s vocals, which are just so hoary. To the point of corniness. Really embarrassing.

Another example is the playing of Booker T & The MG’s on "Green Onions". The deep, deep groove they create on that song is just incredibly cool. It’s done by doing just as shadorne stated above---using timing---when to play each note, "creating space", just as painters do with "negative space". It’s not just what they paint, it’s what they don’t. The MG’s guitarist Steve Cropper wasn’t merely tasteful, he knew how to create an intense level of anticipation, of kinetic energy, the likes of which Pete Townsend couldn’t approach. The tone Cropper got out of a Tele was also superb, a sound still sought after by guitarists. Almost as good as that of James Burton, creator of the solo in "Young World" by Ricky Nelson, obviously the model (in both construction and guitar tone) for George Harrison's solo in "Nowhere Man". The only other ensemble that played at that level (apart from The Band, of course ;-) were The Swampers, the house band at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals. Drummer Roger Hawkins (whom Jim Keltner has stated he wished he played more like!), bassist David Hood, guitarist Jimmy Johnson, pianist Barry Beckett, and organist Spooner Oldham are absolutely revered by all the best musicians in the world.

Steve Gadd is just a ridiculously good drummer, and has played with Clapton for years. In addition to J.J. Cale, another guitarist not too well known to most is Danny Gatton, also R.I.P. Danny is known for not just virtuosity, but musicality. Vince Gill nicknamed him "The Humbler". The best guitarist you’ve never heard. There is a double-CD best-of available on WB Records. My favorite story to tell fans of purely virtuoso drumming:

Danny Gatton, to his new drummer after the first set of their first live gig together: "You know all that fancy stuff you play?"

The drummer: "Yeah"

Danny: "Don’t"

Danny was a guitar virtuoso, but didn’t want his rhythm section playing virtuoso-style. I came to realize THAT’S what was wrong with Cream. So did Clapton, after hearing The Hawks/Band. In another video on You Tube, Clapton says he knows that people rave about his guitar playing on the Wheels Of Fire album, but that he thinks it’s dreadful. He grew to hate that kind of playing, and to love J.J.’s kind of playing. Each to his own! My guy is Ry Cooder, whose playing on John Hiatt’s "Lipstick Sunset" is as good as it gets.

I was at the Fillmore and Winterland Cream shows along with Jorma (whose acoustic guitar playing is not bad, unlike his dreadfully bad playing on electric in The Airplane), and at the time loved them. I also saw The Who at The Carousel Ballroom performing the entire "A Quick One While He’s Away" suite, and the following year playing the Tommy album. Keith Moon was a RIOT, playing with astounding kinetic energy, humour, an absolute madman. But it was the bass playing of John Entwistle that astounded me. Amongst the three greatest bassists I’ve ever seen and heard live (along with Joey Spampinato of NRBQ and Rick Danko of The Band).

Keith Moon was quoted as saying he couldn’t have played in The Buddy Rich big band, and Buddy couldn’t have played in The Who. Horses for courses. And there couldn’t have been a Cream without Ginger’s playing. But as far as developing a playing style, an approach to a lifetime of making music, there are other considerations. John Hiatt chose Jim Keltner to play on his Bring The Family album, not Ginger Baker. And he chose Ry Cooder to play guitar, not Jeff Beck. For me, the song comes first, the singer second, the band third, and the individual musicians last. But I’m a song guy; a great song sung or played by even a mediocre singer or musician is much more musically satisfying for me than the opposite. Others disagree, which is as it should be.

Clapton in The Last Waltz said "Music had been going in the wrong direction for a long time. When I heard Music From Big Pink, I thought to myself, well, someone has finally gone and done it right". I had to relearn how to play drums after eventually "getting" ensemble playing (while hearing Dewey Martin of Buffalo Springfield play live in the Summer of ’69, in his post-Springfield band). But I love AC/DC! While just about all the other British Bands at least try to play Blues (Sonny Boy Williamson telling The Hawks in 1965 about the bands he had been provided with for his recent British tour, where he was backed by The Yardbirds---of which Clapton was at the time a member---and others: "They wanna play the Blues so bad. And that’s just how they play it" ;-), AC/DC is pure, American, Chuck Berry-derived Rock ’n’ Roll, my first love. Long live Rockpile!

As for amps, after my "awakening", nothing was less cool than a Marshall or Orange or HiWatt stack. All the good guitarists I’ve met and/or played with (and seen live for that matter) long ago switched to small combo amps, especially the Fender Deluxe Reverb and Vox AC30. Mike Campbell buys every old Vox he finds, they say. A Gibson Les Paul Jr. into a Deluxe (on 10 ;-) is the bomb! That’s what Jonny Kaplan played when I was with him. When I recorded with Evan Johns, he played a Tele into a Super Reverb (4-10’s) on 10, which was pretty rockus. That was Stevie Ray Vaughan’s favorite amp. Twin Reverb’s (early Jerry Garcia and Santana) are too brittle and piercing for me. Combo Bassman’s are great.

He (Jorma) saw Cream at Winterland in San Francisco when the British power trio was recording its historic Wheels of Fire double album in 1968.

“I never saw anything like it,” he says. “The whole show was mind-boggling.” Cream was “just powerful, and no one was more animated than Ginger,” Kaukonen says, referring to drummer Ginger Baker, whom many say was the best drummer in rock and roll history.

Kaukonen says he had seen Cream once before, during their first U.S. tour at The Fillmore in San Francisco, after the group released its debut album, Fresh Cream. During the late 1960s, a lot of people were raving about Jimi Hendrix, Kaukonen says, but "I personally just dug what Eric Clapton was doing with traditional blues more.

"In my opinion, no one transliterated the music of the masters into the power trio format better than Eric and his pals. Hendrix was monumental. I just dug Clapton more. What Eric was doing was important to me. He was probably the first person to make me want to use a wah-wah pedal.”

So there are different kinds of ensemble playing, some of which require extreme displays of personality to make the ensemble work, again in my non musician humble opinion.