The song Eric Clapton called “a changing point in music”
Every generation tends to have a handful of albums where it felt like the Earth moved on its axis. As much as music may have been going in one direction, everything went in the opposite way when these bands made their masterpieces, causing the rest of the world to follow in their footsteps, trying their hand at equalling that album’s power. Although Eric Clapton can claim to have taken part in many landmark albums, he believed one record marked a massive shift in what music was meant to be.
Then again, Clapton’s taste in music always circled back to one thing: the blues. Although he may have gotten accolades for paving the way for rock and roll across his records, Clapton’s heart was always in blues as varied as the Mississippi Delta and big cities like Chicago, always looking to twist the medium in some way to pull on that extra heartstring.
Once Clapton started working with bands like Cream, though, he got an education on what could be done outside the blues. Embracing the sounds of jazz and psychedelic rock, many of the band’s most celebrated moments came from working outside their medium, resulting in the most celebrated riffs of all time, like ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’.
While Clapton still found time to incorporate the sounds of his heroes like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, the American music scene also saw another surge in the world of R&B. In the wake of artists like Ray Charles becoming one of the most acclaimed performers in the world, the sounds of labels like Motown were spitting out one classic after another, from the Jackson 5 to Marvin Gaye.
Despite becoming known as a hit factory throughout the 1960s and beyond, Stevie Wonder stood out as a rock and roll force for nature. Compared to the other rock stars of the time relying on blues, Wonder’s pop sensibilities combined with his knowledge of music theory made for some of the most sophisticated songs of his era across albums like Songs in the Key of Life.
When Clapton had begun working out his first chords on the guitar, he was initially knocked out by what he heard in the song ‘I Was Made to Love Her’, released while Wonder was still going by ‘Lil’ Stevie Wonder’ and performing both at the piano and with a harmonica. For all of the great music Wonder could make on his own, Clapton was just as fascinated with the backing band he had behind him.
Reminiscing on hearing it for the first time, Clapton would consider the song to be the first major time he listened to what a backing band was capable of, telling BBC Radio 4, “It seemed to be a changing point in music for me. I heard it in the 60’s and the bass playing in this song by James Jamerson changed R&B and rock and roll radically overnight, I think”.
Clapton wasn’t the only one fascinated with Jamerson’s playing, with Paul McCartney later claiming to have adopted his style when working on The Beatles’ experimental records like Rubber Soul and Revolver. While most bands play to showcase everyone’s abilities, Jamerson helped teach legions of players that tasteful playing is always done in service to the song.
