Eric Clapton on blues music

    The Saunterer is quoting this from page 33 of Eric Clapton’s autobiography:

    It’s very difficult to explain the effect the blues record I heard had on me, except to say that I recognized it immediately. It was as if I were being reintroduced to something that I already knew, maybe from another, earlier life. For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall. This was the feeling I had when I first heard the Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee song on Uncle Mac, and the same thing happened when I first heard Big Bill Broonzy.

    (Clapton: The Autobiography is published by Broadway Books, 2007.)
    For a brief biography of Eric Clapton, click here. For images of or relating to Eric Clapton, click here.
    To be primitatively soothed by a short video of Big Bill Broonzy playing “Hey Hey,” click here.

Comments

[Mark Rasmussen]

For me, it was Hot Tuna playing "Hesitation Blues"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iscSeh98klU

And then Blind Willie Johnson playing "Dark is the Night"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNj2BXW852g

My theory is that there must be a very few things that have appeal across many if not all cultures. Things that are so fundamental that they have, as Clapton said, primitive appeal. They are just right.

Blues, soccer, chili peppers, Dr. Pepper

Anything else?