Eric Clapton has been tapped for Blues Hall of Fame induction not only for his many achievements during a long and successful career but also for his role as a popularizer who has brought the blues to audiences far more widespread than those reached by the original bluesmen whose music inspired him. Clapton has consistently included blues material on albums that have registered in the upper echelons of the pop music charts. In the process Clapton has not only brought new listeners into the blues fold but has generated royalties for the blues legends whose songs he has covered–royalties often well in excess of those the bluesmen earned from their own recordings.
The first British musician inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, Clapton was born in Ripley, Surrey, on March 30, 1945. He identified with the power and uplifting spirit of the blues from his early days as a guitarist, and amidst forays into other genres has always remained a blues devotee. At the age of 18, as a member of the Yardbirds, he played guitar on a Sonny Boy Williamson LP, and soon did sessions with bluesmen Otis Spann and Champion Jack Dupree, not to mention the influential work he did with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Cream and Blind Faith. In between his many subsequent albums and world tours, he played on Howlin’ Wolf’s London Sessions and recorded with several of his early guitar heroes, including B.B. King, Freddie King, Buddy Guy, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker and Otis Rush.
Clapton topped the Billboard charts with an album of blues standards, From the Cradle, in 1994, and with the blues-laden Unplugged album in 1992, and hit the top ten with his Robert Johnson tribute, Me and Mr. Johnson in 2004 and his collaboration with B.B. King, Riding With the King, in 2000. Clapton’s battle with drug and alcohol addiction led him to found the Crossroads Centre rehab facility in Antigua in 1998. His Crossroads Guitar Festival is both a showcase for many of the world’s leading guitarists and a fundraiser for the Crossroads Centre.