Sunday, January 26, 2020

Eric Clapton - Cryin' - Non-Album Tracks (1978-1979)

It's been a while since I've posted an Eric Clapton stray tracks album, so here's another one from him. This one deals with 1978 and 1979.

Clapton's solo career really began in 1974 (even though he put out a solo album in 1970). For the first couple of years, he did a great many songs that never appeared on his studio albums at the time. But as the 1970s went on, the number of such songs steadily went down. I'd been able to post at least one stray tracks album for each calendar year so far, but this one covers two years.

I'm guessing that lack of song variety was a result of his increasing drug and/or alcohol habits. That said, the songs he does here are still up to his usual standards. Three of the songs, "To Make Somebody Happy," "Cryin'," and "Water on the Ground," are Clapton originals, which is a bit surprising since he never was a prolific songwriter, and those didn't get released until decades later.

Most of the songs were released on either the "Blues" or "Crossroads 2" albums. Three were not. "Fool's Paradise" is one of those. All through the 1970s, at least, Clapton usually had at least one spot in his concert set lists where one of his female backing vocalists could sing lead. This is one such song. Normally, I haven't included them because Clapton usually wasn't very engaged, or even left the stage altogether. But on this one he sings prominent backing vocals himself, and also plays some nice lead guitar.

The other two unreleased songs are the last two, "Tipitina" and "Standing Around Crying." The latter is a duet with blues great Muddy Waters recorded in concert a few years before Waters died. Unfortunately, the sound quality for these two is a lot rougher than all the others on the album. I hope you'll put up with it though, especially for the historic collaboration between Clapton and Waters.

Clapton recorded two versions of the blues classic "Before You Accuse Me" in the late 1970s, an acoustic version and an electric version. I've only included the acoustic version here because the electric one is very similar to the version he did for his 1989 album "Journeyman."

01 Before You Accuse Me [Acoustic Version] (Eric Clapton)
02 Kind Hearted Woman (Eric Clapton)
03 Fool's Paradise (Eric Clapton & Marcy Levy)
04 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Eric Clapton)
05 To Make Somebody Happy (Eric Clapton)
06 Cryin' (Eric Clapton)
07 Water on the Ground (Eric Clapton)
08 Tipitina (Eric Clapton)
09 Standing Around Crying (Eric Clapton & Muddy Waters)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15101754/EricC_1978-1979_Cryin_atse.zip.html

The album cover uses a photo of Clapton from Japan in November 1979.

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