God doesn't need to know what time it is.

@stuartk +1 on James Burton.

Glen Campbell’s massive overall talent often overshadows the fact that , if he wants to, he can play as well as anybody.

Jerry Reed holds his own on a YouTube vid with Chet Atkins, which is a remarkable feat.

I abhor modern “country” music, but the average session player on these tracks could play circles around just about anybody.  Brad Paisley is a recording artist in this milieu who is an unbelievably great guitar player.

@tablejockey We’re not exactly treading on consistent-audiophilia-related ground when we’re talking about watches and God, are we?  I didn’t know being a decent human was “woke.”

This forum seems to fetishize a well-known, well-documented, vile racist who said some of the most abominable things while being a blues-music-appropriator. So he says vile things about people of color, then goes on to another gig where he makes huge money ripping off old blues music.  Pretty classy dude.

Yet, for the 10,000,000th time in history, here’s someone referring to him as, “God.”

This is the third Clapton-related thread in a couple weeks.

Sheesh. 
You guys are aware he is a culturally-appropriating, virulent racist, right?

@mahgister Hey, it’s a free country.  
People can side with David Duke, Tucker Carlson, anybody they want.

I’m really glad I saw David Lindley and Jesse Ed Davis mentioned here.

A couple guys with both the technical proficiency AND the creativity/originality/voice

I love listening to these guys.

@stuartk Indeed, which is why I said, “the average session player on these tracks could play circles around just about anybody,” and then qualified Brad Paisley as a “recording artist,” as he is as good as the session players.

@bdp24 IMO, one example of a player who is capable of doing all the showy “whootly-whootly” wankery but chooses to instead be only in service of the song is Lindsey Buckingham.  

@tomcy6 You didn’t read or understand my post.

For you to play this brain-dead, bully style of argument-making, badgering me about playing with famous people, or how many “blues festivals” 😂 I’ve played, it’s unseemly.

If I had 50 platinum records, this makes my opinion more valid?

Again, try to avoid brazen thinking fallacies in your argument.  Appeals to numbers ain’t gonna cut it.

You don’t know anything about me, how good I am, nothing.  You think only people with commercial success can have an opinion.  In a world of Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, and Justin Bieber…no, I don’t believe one’s commercial success gives their opinion more validity.  But good try.

@tomcy6 McDonald’s has sold 8 kazillion burgers.  That don’t make them the world’s culinary Mecca.  You can use blunt appeals to numbers to make your argument.  That doesn’t make your argument cogent.  By your logic, Milli Vanilli, Justin Bieber and Nickelback are much greater than the Velvet Underground or Kraftwerk or The Stooges.

Clapton is good at guitar. No reasonably-minded person would say he is not.

He is just waaaaaay, way less good than he has been portrayed through 5+ decades.  The fact that he’s an objectively awful human ain’t helpin’ things.

@tablejockey You could have Clapton’s playing ability if you just bought a guitar and practiced with marginal diligence.  I would guess the average person hits Clapton-level ability after about a year from starting from scratch.

There’s nothing special about his playing.  As basic as it gets.

@mahgister Yikes.  You said it best: “I’m too old to be imprisoned in reeducation camp.”

I only call it as I see it.  Considering reprinting his 1976 comments here would be far too grotesque, I would urge you to google them.  The ideas he expressed are patently revolting, but then even more galling when one considers his entire career was built off of appropriating these same people’s music (with little-to-no creativity and evolution, I might add)

You call it, “imprisonment in reeducation,” I call it being set free by the truth.

@mahgister I agree that leveling a charge such as cultural appropriation is not to be taken lightly, or tossed around willy-nilly.  For instance, is Eminem culturally-appropriative, or just exceptionally good at what he does?  I think these are good, interesting debates to have.  
However, such a charge may have merit in Clapton’s case when his music’s progenitors received little to no recognition, in either a relative sense or a general sense, and then here comes another young British dude doing that stuff and enjoying the era’s fetishization with young white dudes playing “blues,” and thusly receiving commercial success some 100x that of the originators. 
At least in Eminem’s care, there were a dozen-or-so originators who had enjoyed a lot of commercial success for a good 15 years preceding him, whereas, again, most of the originators of the blues barely made a living and still had to hold regular jobs.

I think these are important things to look at.  History is always written by the winners, and it’s always easy to cry “foul” in the face of criticism when you are the exploiter, while the other side remains the exploited.