Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lacks SOUL! Are you nuts? This album IS Soul!, July 5, 2000
I almost laughed reading what a previous reviewer said about this album "lacking soul". Man, this is what Eric Clapton is all about. He loves the blues, he lived the blues, he is a blues man. When you hear him growl in "Groaning the Blues", that's Eric practically ripping out his larynx singing the blues to its low-down-and-dirtiest. Eric keeps the blues's integrity alive by recording the songs straight-forward without any overdubs (sans Motherless Child), and yet the sound of the songs are uniquely his own even though they are covers. And his guitarwork in this album is unparalleled. FIVE LONG YEARS will blow you away. I listened to that song over and over and over and I couldn't get enough of it. If this won't get you to play air guitar, nothing will. This, in my opinion, is Eric Clapton's best work, period. Eric should have never gone astray to record hoary pop standards; his home is the blues. Don't listen to what the purists say; they don't know anything. Listen to this CD instead.
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43 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
About retracing one's steps, one blue note at a time., April 18, 2003
"All along this path I tread, my heart betrays my weary head; with nothing but my love to save, from the cradle to the grave ..."
Summing up his thoughts on a recently failed relationship, Eric Clapton jotted down these words one night in early 1994, and they eventually made their way into the cover booklet of the album he released later that same year, the last line also providing the album's title. And "there's anger and love and fear on this record," Clapton told Billboard Magazine about the self-evaluation he was undergoing at the time, explaining that in recording this album, he had sought to once and for all break the - partially self-imposed - barriers and trappings of fame and fortune, girls and glamour, drugs and booze, in order to just "get out and ... say what I want to say, be what I want to be [and] love what I want to love."
What he had loved from his earliest years on, of course, was the blues; and a real blues album was thus what he had always wanted to record - ever since his days with the Yardbirds (which he left when they strayed towards more mainstream, commercial sounds) and with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, the training ground for much of Britain's blues elite of the 1960s and 1970s. So in a major way, this album constitutes a return to Eric Clapton's roots.
At the same time, however, it is a marvelous tribute to the artists on whose influence Clapton builds to this day, and who first made the songs recorded here famous. Like any good blues album, "From the Cradle" was recorded live in the studio: with the exception of some dobro and drum overdub on "How Long Blues" and "Motherless Child" respectively, all vocals and instrumental parts are the pure, unadulterated product of the recording sessions involved. With or without extended solos, Clapton's guitar work is stellar as always, and his vocals are as raw and rough as hardly ever before. He may not actually outgrowl the great Chess and Delta Blues men - listen to his 2001 album "Riding With the King" with B.B. King or to Muddy Waters's 1977 version of "Hoochie Coochie Man" if you have any doubts - but this truly becomes apparent only in direct comparison with them, and it really says more about those other musicians than it does about Clapton himself. If it were not for the fact that many of the recordings on this album have long become classics in their own right and that Clapton's voice is not easily confused with that of any other artist in the first place, I'm almost certain that you could fool a fair number of people into believing that they were listening to an album recorded 40 years or even longer ago in Chicago or Memphis. This is the real thing, folks, no question about it; and it is performed with as much skill as soul by Eric Clapton and a tremendous group of musicians consisting of Dave Bronze (bass), Jim Keltner (drums), Andy Fairweather Low (guitar), Jerry Portnoy (harmonica), Chris Stainton (keyboards), Roddy Lorimer (trumpet) and Simon Clarke and Tim Sanders (saxophone) - many of the well-known to Clapton's live audiences the world over as well.
In selecting the songs for this album, Eric Clapton purposely chose the most intense blues songs he could think of, not even shying away from classics that he had heretofore considered "untouchable," like Muddy Waters's (or actually, Willie Dixon's) aforementioned "Hoochie Coochie Man." And in a not entirely surprising turn, they - and "Hoochie Coochie Man" in particular - soon became fixtures in his own live appearances as much as they had been fixtures in the appearances of the artists who had first made them famous, from Leroy Carr's "Blues Before Sunrise" and "How Long Blues" to Lowell Fulson's "Reconsider Baby" and "Sinner's Prayer," Eddie Boyd's "Five Long Years," James Lane's "Goin' Away Baby" and "Blues Leave Me Alone," Elmore James's "It Hurts Me Too," Freddie King's "Someday After a While," another famous Muddy Waters tune, "Standin' Round Crying," and the concluding, aptly titled "Groaning the Blues." And all colors of this blues kaleidoscope also represent shades and aspects of Eric Clapton's own life, because, as he told Billboard, all of them have had a certain meaning to him at some point or another. In that sense, the album is a very personal one - maybe not quite as much as the 1970 Derek and the Dominos recording "Layla and Other Assorted Lovesongs," one of the earliest and biggest highlights of Clapton's career, but certainly close; in expressing "the thing I've loved from day one, the most exciting and satisfying thing I've known."
Coming on the heels of 1989's "Journeyman" and 1992's hugely successful "Unplugged," which had redefined the standards by which acoustic recordings were measured and, in the process, had also given an unexpectedly new meaning to the title track of "Layla," "From the Cradle" was one of a trilogy of albums which injected new life into Clapton's career and ensured that his fans would be able to enjoy his immeasurable contributions to the world of music for - at least - another decade. In 1991, Clapton had also recorded the soundtrack for the movie "Rush," arguably yet another very personal project, and released a CD documenting his marathon 24 live appearances at Royal Albert Hall, appropriately named "24 Nights." And while any Eric Clapton album will to a certain extent be an expression of the point where he sees himself and his career at the time of the recording, it's all about the music again now, and about the joy of playing. Nothing shows this clearer than his dual 2001 releases "Reptile" and "Riding With the King." "From the Cradle" was an important stepping stone in getting to this point, and I am glad we have been allowed, yet again, to share in that experience. Thank you, Eric!
Also recommended:
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert
Crossroads
Unplugged
One More Car: One More Rider (CD & DVD Set)
Riding with the King
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eric pays homage to his heroes, July 27, 2000
By A Customer
I think a lot of you guys are missing the point about this album. One guy said "he is far from being one of the greatest traditional electric bluesman". That should be plainly obvious. Eric Clapton is not a traditional bluesman. He's a rock and roll musician all the way, who was deeply influenced by the blues. He's great at playing the blues, but Muddy Waters he ain't. Remember that Clapton is NOT a Mississippi-born country boy who grew up playing guitar in the cotton fields. He's British. He grew up a world away from blues culture. From The Cradle, in my opinion, is not bad at all for an Englishman. Heck, it would be pretty good for a Mississippi/Chicago native. With From The Cradle, Clapton is not trying to pronounce himself as the second coming of the blues. He's just paying homage to the music and the musicians which deeply inspired his playing. Even B.B. King himself said that Clapton is one of the best blues players in the world. And if B.B. King doesn't know soul when he hears it, then no one does. I agree that the music of B.B., Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, etc is much better blues than this. But this album should not be compared to "real blues", the same way that a tribute album should not be compared to the music of the original artist who is recieving the tribute. Great album. If listening to this CD doesn't make you get down on your knees and worship Clapton, then you'd be better off listening to Britney Spears.
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is Eric Clapton's 
