“Blues ancient and modern,” was how Eric Clapton described Cream’s music when the trio were launched in an orgy of expectations in the summer of 1966. Bassist (and classically trained cellist) Jack Bruce spoke of “re-writing the blues” while awesome drummer Ginger Baker talked about the “fantastic sound we were all part of”.
Clapton already had impeccable blues credentials, courtesy of his stint with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Bruce and Baker had arrived from the progressive R&B-based Graham Bond Organisation. The chemistry that these three mercurial talents produced blew apart the stuffy, traditional British blues scene that had demanded faithful note-for-note reproductions of American blues.
Cream took the two-note riff of Howling Wolf’s Spoonful and expanded it from two and a half minutes to six and a half, jamming with an intensity that had not been seen outside jazz. Behind them a host of bands from Fleetwood Mac to Chicken Shack followed them into the breach.
It was the same when they got to America. The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane prided themselves on their musicianship but Cream simply blew them away. They increasingly focussed on breaking America and by their third album, the double Wheels Of Fire in the summer of 1968, they had done so. But they had also broken themselves.
Their volatile mix could not withstand the incessant touring and they broke up after a final show at London’s Royal Albert Hall in November 1968. They had pioneered the changes however. When they started it was all known as pop music. When they finished they were spearheading rock music.
