The one singer Eric Clapton considered the model of greatness: “That’s how it’s done”
Being the frontman in a group wasn’t what Eric Clapton envisioned when he first signed up for this rock and roll job.
He didn’t even think that he was going to be one of the greatest guitarists in the world when working with The Yardbirds, but when he saw the competition he was up against, it wasn’t hard for him to translate everything he heard from his old blues idols and spit it back out as some of the most blistering lead guitar work anyone had ever heard up until that point – when he wanted to step in front of the microphone for the first time, he knew he would never be in the same league as his idols.
Because, really, how the hell could a voice as his compete with anyone else? He and Jack Bruce were a great vocal tandem in Cream, but when you look at Bruce’s stratospheric range every single time he went for a high note, it’s not like there was any sense of competition as to who was the better singer. Clapton was only looking to get the words out, and it wasn’t until Derek and the Dominos that he finally seemed more comfortable in taking over vocal duties most of the time.
If you look at the tone of Clapton’s voice, though, it’s not exactly suited for blues. Some of the best guitarists that he had followed were people like Muddy Waters, and with a voice that was that soulful, no one was going to claim that ‘Slowhand’s adolescent drawl was going to do him any favours when he started singing his version of Bob Marley’s ‘I Shot the Sherriff’. There was still room for Clapton to grow, but he had nothing on what Ray Charles had been doing when working on his classics.
After all, Steve Winwood was already being treated like a British version of the keyboard legend when Clapton started working with him in blind Faith, and it wasn’t exactly easy for him to assume vocal duties when working on ‘Presence of the Lord’. But even though he was following all of the lessons that he was taught by his fellow bluesmen, Charles had a unique way of phrasing that seemed so much more effortless than anything that Clapton had been doing in his bands.
Charles seemed to live and breathe soul music from the minute he opened his mouth, and that was the kind of tone that Clapton was always after, saying, “When I watch Ray Charles sing, I think, ‘That’s it, that’s how it’s done.’ He remembers thousands of songs, and he sings them all as if they’re the most important songs he knows.” But isn’t that what all great rock and roll should be about?
Clapton wasn’t a stranger to making the guitar cry every single time he played, but when looking through the greatest singers of all time, they were approaching each song like it was the last thing that they would ever sing. Aretha Franklin wasn’t going to settle for good enough whenever she made her finest records, and you had no doubt that Freddie Mercury was giving every ounce of energy he could to the back of the audience every time that he was belting to the rafters.
But a lot of what people forget about Charles’s music is how comfortable he sounded playing every single tune. The biggest names in music would have gladly put everything they had into a song, and while Charles is doing the same thing, the reason why his tunes work so well is that you can feel the affection in his voice on ‘Georgia On My Mind’ or the sexual energy behind a song like ‘What’d I Say’.
So while Clapton was known to do a lot more talking with his guitar whenever he played, Charles would always be the template for what some of the greatest singers should aspire to in his books. Not everyone needed to be singing R&B to have a great voice, but if they used the piano legend as their benchmark, they were bound to come out with something spectacular on their own.
