Blues: Eric Clapton the Early Years - Doug Boduch Page Two

I guess playing with John Mayall (photo) didn't hurt either. Now there is an unsung underrated blues singer and multi-instrumantalist. The Godfather of Blues Appreciation in the UK anyway.

Younger Clapton fans should buy John Mayalls Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton where he is reading the Beano comic (photo).

Beano is from before Monty Python. Anyway a great disc with 1 Robert Johnson song but not Crossroads. Next is All your Love (which is taught herein), Hideaway by Freddie King, Mose Allison' Parchman Farm and Ray Charles What I'd say. Incidentally Billy Gibbons sites Ray as his 'favorite' if he had to choose. There are 3 Mayall originals as well. While we are on the subject of John Mayall another disc of his with great blues guitar on it I recommend is Blues from Laurel Canyon and hear Mick Taylor get it on. He went on to join the Stones. Great guitar player too.

I have Eric Clapton's autobiography and in it he says he could play Greensleeves on the recorder when he was 6. The recorder is a one pieced flute with holes you press down upon to lengthen and shorten the airs passage as opposed to a Pan Flute with different lengths reeds where you blow more like a harmonica.

First designed way, way, way back and you'd need Mr. Peabody's wayback machine to find Pythagoras of Samos who lived in a Greek Colony; Syracuse (in Italy), part of Magna Grecia but everyone knew him as their cult leader without the Kool aid!

Pythagoreans believed in numbers and thought that they were holy and maybe they are. The trinity - the triad. The Tritone, The Holy Ghost bend and the list goes on. Besides his famous Pythagorean Theorem Pythagoras invented the major scale and the modes too which is what concerns us here! No, but believe it or not a lot of blues and boogie woogie bass lines are the Mixolydian mode which is an ancient Greek minor mode.

But I find that interesting - That at a very young age Eric gained a basic understanding of the major scale from a simpler instrument the recorder. Thus laying the equivalent of a reinforced concrete footer from which to build upon.

Eric Clapton Early Years Doug Boduch Page One | Page Two | Page Three