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BY LUIS BUENAFLOR JR.
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Friday, March 10, 2017
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PERHAPS my entry level to “Blues” was courtesy of Eric Clapton aka “Slowhand”, although way back in the late ‘60s I was already exposed and listening to the “blues, jazz rock” fusion by way of Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and Pink Floyd. I haven’t considered seriously getting into the “Blues” till I heard the music of Eric Clapton sometime in the early ‘70s. The irony there is that the first Eric Clapton song I listened to wasn’t even “Blues” in the strictest sense of the word.
It was a cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” therefore “Reggae Music” and not “Blues” but that got me curious with this English musician they call “Slowhand”.
As usual, before you get lost in translation let’s define some terms first.
According to Wikipedia: “Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, and European-American folk music. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or “worried notes”), usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.”
This means that the musical genre known as the “Blues” is one of the forms of music that originally was created and developed in America the other one being Jazz.
What got me curious in the first place about Eric Clapton was the fact that an established English rocker was playing basically “Blues “an American music genre knowing full well that the English tend to look down on the Americans as “our cousins across the ocean deprived of arts and culture.”
I also asked this question: “What in the world is this pale white English musician doing playing what is basically a “black Afro-American music?” As I got deeper into the “Blues” I found out that the “Blues” is the musical genre that basically inspired a lot of English rockers i.e. “Rolling Stones”, “Beatles”, “Pink Floyd” just to name the big ones. It seems that the “Blues” is highly revered in the English musical scene.
But who is Eric Clapton in the first place?
According to Wikipedia: “Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE (born 30 March 1945), is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time. Clapton ranked second in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” and fourth in Gibson’s “Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.” He was also named number five in Time magazine’s list of “The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players” in 2009.
And that is Eric Clapton the CBE after his name means Commander of the British Empire an honor bestowed by the Queen of England for his exemplary service in the field of arts and music. Not bad for someone who was once hooked on “Cocaine”.
So how Eric Clapton did come to be known in the music circles as “Slowhand”?
The Yardbirds’ manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, gave Eric Clapton the nickname “Slowhand” in early 1964.
The Yardbirds rhythm guitarist, Chris Dreja, recalled that whenever Eric Clapton broke a guitar string during a concert, Eric would stay on stage and replace it. The English audiences would wait out the delay by doing a “slow handclap”. [The British colloquialism is “to be given the Slowhand”.]
Clapton told his official biographer, Ray Coleman, in the mid-80s that “My nickname of ‘Slowhand’ came from Giorgio Gomelsky. He coined it as a good pun. He kept saying I was a fast player, so he put together the slow handclap phrase into ‘Slowhand’ as a play on words.”
The “Blues” is just a good man feeling bad./PN
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