Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [158]
While I am talking about heroes and musicians that have moved me, I would have to put Little Walter near the top of my list. He played harmonica with Muddy Waters in the early days, before going solo, and he was the master of his instrument. He was also one of the most soulful singers I have ever heard.
I also regret that I never had the good fortune to play with Ray Charles. He was, in my opinion, the greatest singer of all time, and he was also a blues singer. The blues is a style of music that was born from the union between African and European folk cultures, conceived in slavery, and fostered in the Mississippi delta. It has its own scale, its own laws and traditions, and its own language. In my view it’s a celebration of triumph over adversity, full of humor, double entendre, and irony, and it’s very rarely, if ever, depressing to listen to. It can be, and usually is, the most uplifting music you will ever hear. Ray Charles took that essence and injected it into every style of music he played, from gospel to jazz to rhythm and blues to country and western. Whatever the occasion, whatever the format, he always sang the blues. I had the privilege of being on an album of his in the eighties, but my playing was overdubbed and he wasn’t actually there. I would have loved to have been able to sit in a room accompanying him, while he sang and played, just to have had the experience.
The one man I have left out so far is Muddy Waters, the reason being that, for me, he represented something much more fundamental. He was the first of the truly great bluesmen that I met and played with, and the first to show me real encouragement and kindness. Long before we ever met, he was the most powerful of all the modern blues players I had heard on record, and the sheer strength of his musical character had a profound effect on me as a green young scholar listening my way forward. Later on, right up until the day he died, he was very much a part of my life, touring with me, counseling me, and generally acting as the father figure I never really had. I was even present, along with Roger, at his wedding ceremony, when he married his last wife, Marva.
Toward the end of our last times together, Muddy began speaking to me in earnest about carrying on the legacy of the blues, calling me his adopted son, and I assured him that I would do my best to honor this responsibility. It was almost an overwhelming trust to fully take in, but I took him at his word, and as much as this kind of thing is humorously disregarded these days, I am absolutely certain that he meant it. One of the few regrets I have in my life is that my drinking was at its peak during the years we spent together, thereby preventing me from having a truly intimate relationship with him. Alcohol would have always come first in those days. It was also highly illuminating, many years after Muddy’s death, to read an interview he did when he was very young, where he named Leroy Carr as his first real influence. I had always felt the same way about Leroy Carr, but had never met anyone who shared that. To me the connection felt logical