Cream

Formation (1966)

By July 1966, Eric Clapton's career with the Yardbirds and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers had earned him a reputation as one of the premier blues guitarists in Britain. Clapton, however, found the environment of Mayall's band confining and sought to expand his playing in a new band. In 1966, Clapton met Ginger Baker, then the drummer of the Graham Bond Organisation, for which Jack Bruce had played bass guitar, harmonica, and piano. Baker felt stifled in the Graham Bond Organisation and had grown tired of Graham Bond's drug addictions and bouts of mental instability. "I had always liked Ginger", explained Clapton. "Ginger had come to see me play with the Bluesbreakers. After the gig, he drove me back to London in his Rover. I was very...

Style and legacy

The members of Cream were described by Richie Unterberger of AllMusic as "[yearning] to break free of the confines of the standard rock/R&B/blues group". He described the band's first album Fresh Cream as "electrified and amped-up traditional blues", and described the band's second album Disraeli Gears as "invigorating, sometimes beguiling hard-driving psychedelic pop" that used "expected, crunching" guitar riffs. According to Hugh of Classic Rock, "Cream pioneered a fusion of rock, blues and jazz that directly influenced an entire generation of musicians and therefore the course of rock music over the next decade. And the legacy continues to filter down." He also assessed, "Before Cream [formed] in 1966, most British pop music stuck...

Anyone for Tennis

"Anyone for Tennis (The Savage Seven Theme)" is a song by the British rock band Cream. It was used as the theme song for the 1968 film The Savage Seven.

Badge

"Badge" is a song by the British rock band Cream, written by Eric Clapton and George Harrison. It first appeared on Cream's final album, Goodbye, released in the UK on 28 February 1969.

It was issued as a single in the US on 17 March, and its release followed in the UK on 3 April. "Badge" peaked at number 18 in the UK Singles Chart and number 60 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Composition

"Badge" was originally an untitled track. During the production transfer for the album Goodbye, the original music sheet was used to produce the liner notes and track listing. The only discernible word on the page was "bridge" (indicating the song's bridge section). Due to Harrison's handwriting, however, Clapton misread it as "badge"—and the song was thus titled soon thereafter.

Reception

Cash Box said "More subdued drumming and almost conventional instrumental work show the Cream in a new light, one which should have a tremendous impact on listeners of cleaner-cut rock who may not have been into the blues outings that hit earlier." Billboard called it an "easy beat, driving rocker".

Writing and publishing credits

In the US, Atco Records' initial releases of Goodbye and of "Badge" as a single gave the song's writing credit to Clapton alone, with publishing credit to Robert Stigwood's company Casserole (BMI). Atco later corrected this in 1969 with the release of Best of Cream, which lists both Clapton and Harrison as the song's authors. The UK single of "Badge" released by Polydor Records gave writing credit to both Clapton and Harrison, with publishing credit going to Dratleaf and Harrisongs Ltd. Since the early 1990s the writing credit has been listed as Clapton/Harrison with publishing credit going to E.C. Music, Ltd. and Harrisongs.

I Feel Free

"I Feel Free" is a song first recorded by the British rock band Cream in December 1966. The lyrics were written by Pete Brown, with the music by Jack Bruce.

The song showcases the band's musical diversity, effectively combining blues rock with psychedelic pop.

Background

"I Feel Free" was recorded in September 1966 at Ryemuse Studios. The song was recorded on an Ampex reel-to-reel audio tape recorder by Robert Stigwood and John Timperley. Stigwood made the decision to omit the song on the British release of Fresh Cream, and instead released it as a single.

Cover versions

In 1967, The Amboy Dukes recorded their version of the song for their eponymous debut album.

SWLABR

"SWLABR" is a song recorded by the British rock band Cream in 1967. It first appeared on the album Disraeli Gears (1967).

Later, the song was the B-side to Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" single.

Background

The poet Pete Brown wrote the words and Cream's bassist Jack Bruce wrote the music. Bruce sings and plays bass guitar, with Eric Clapton on guitars and Ginger Baker on drums. The title was thought to be an initialism for "She Walks Like a Bearded Rainbow". Bruce later said the W stood for "was" rather than "walks".

Spoonful

"Spoonful" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon and first recorded in 1960 by Howlin' Wolf. Called "a stark and haunting work", it is one of Dixon's best known and most interpreted songs.

Etta James and Harvey Fuqua had a pop and R&B record chart hit with their duet cover of "Spoonful" in 1961 and it was popularized in the late 1960s by the British rock group Cream.

Background and lyrics

Dixon's "Spoonful" is loosely based on "A Spoonful Blues", a song recorded in 1929 by Charley Patton. Earlier related songs include "All I Want Is a Spoonful" by Papa Charlie Jackson (1925) and "Cocaine Blues" by Luke Jordan (1927).

Composition and recording

"Spoonful" has a one-chord, modal blues structure found in other songs Dixon wrote for Howlin' Wolf, such as "Wang Dang Doodle" and "Back Door Man", and in Wolf's own "Smokestack Lightning". It uses eight-bar vocal sections with twelve-bar choruses and is performed at a medium blues tempo in the key of E. Music critic Bill Janovitz describes it as "brutal, powerful Wolf bellowing in his raspy style. There are few recordings that equal the powerful force of 'Spoonful,' or, for that matter, any other Wolf/Dixon Chess side."

Strange Brew

"Strange Brew" is a song by the British rock band Cream. First released as a single in May 1967 in the UK and July 1967 in the US, it was later added to their second studio album Disraeli Gears.

The song features Eric Clapton on lead vocals rather than the usual lead by Jack Bruce. The single peaked at number 17 on the UK Singles Chart in July of that same year.

Background

In April 1967, during their first trip to New York, at the beginning of the sessions for what would become the Disraeli Gears album, Cream recorded a song called "Lawdy Mama" at Atlantic Studios. The band cut two versions of the song, the first a typical blues shuffle, and the second converted to straight time in a more rock 'n' roll style (both versions can be heard on the Those Were the Days collection). Producer Felix Pappalardi took the tape of the second version of "Lawdy Mama" and, with help from his wife Gail Collins, transformed the song into "Strange Brew", which, according to Eric Clapton, "created a pop song without completely destroying the original groove." Author Robert Palmer noted that Clapton at this stage was employing...

Reception

Upon release, Cash Box called it a "driving, frenetic, medium-paced rock venture." Over in England, Melody Maker wrote it had "a sighing, wistful vocal and a deep resonant backing with Clapton bending and snaking out" although it concluded "maybe not the strongest song they could have put out and we think people expected a more unique idea from the Cream this time." In their review for Disraeli Gears, Rolling Stone named "Strange Brew" as "the most complex song and rather an unusual one in that Eric uses reverb - to stunningly mean and sensual effect - and it is really very far away from the usual blues stylings for which he has been noted." Retrospectively, Matthew Greenwald at AllMusic enthused that it "is one of the group's most...

Tales of Brave Ulysses

"Tales of Brave Ulysses" is a song recorded in 1967 by British group Cream. It was released as the B-side to the "Strange Brew" single in May 1967.

In November, the song was included on Cream's second album, Disraeli Gears. The song features one of the earliest uses of a wah-wah pedal, which guitarist Eric Clapton plays throughout the song.

Background and recording

The song was the first collaboration between guitarist Eric Clapton and artist Martin Sharp. Clapton composed the music, inspired by the Lovin' Spoonful's 1966 hit "Summer in the City". "I just started chatting to Eric", said Sharp, who lived in the same building. "I told him I had written a poem. He, in turn, told me he'd written some music. So I gave him my poem. Two weeks later, he turned up with it on the B-side of a 45 record." Sharp had written the lyrics to the melody of Leonard Cohen's song "Suzanne," specifically the Judy Collins version. In an interview at the time of the song's release, Clapton revealed that the Greek mythos-inspired subject matter stemmed from Sharp's love of the Mediterranean islands and that he had written it...

Release and reception

The song was the B-side for "Strange Brew" released on 26 May 1967, five months ahead of the group's second album, Disraeli Gears, which included both songs. Cash Box called it a "visionary hard rock excursion." Derek Johnson at New Musical Express opined "a complex enigmatic lyric combined with a pounding whalloping beat. Bit more psychedelic than the top side, but not nauseatingly so". Retrospectively, AllMusic's Matthew Greenwald calls it, "One of a few overtly psychedelic songs to have aged gracefully ... Lyrically, it's a relatively factual and colorful rendering of the great Greek tragedy Ulysses".

Those Were the Days

Those Were the Days is a retrospective compilation of music recorded by the British rock band Cream, released on 23 September 1997. It comprises four compact discs and includes almost every studio track released during the band's active lifetime, with the exception of the original "Passing The Time" from Wheels of Fire, and all but three tracks from the live material recorded in 1968 and released on Wheels of Fire, Goodbye, and the two Live Cream volumes of 1970 and 1972.

The title is taken from the song written by Ginger Baker and Mike Taylor, released on Wheels of Fire in 1968.

We're Going Wrong

"We're Going Wrong" is a song by British supergroup Cream from the album Disraeli Gears. The song was written by bassist Jack Bruce and was the only song on Gears that Jack wrote without lyricist Pete Brown.

Wrapping Paper

"Wrapping Paper" is a song by the British rock group Cream. Bassist and singer Jack Bruce composed the music, with lyrics by Pete Brown.

In 1966, Reaction Records released the song on their debut single, with "Cat's Squirrel" as the B-side. It reached number 34 on the UK Singles Chart in 1966.

Background

In contrast with the hard blues rock of other early Cream songs such as "N.S.U." and the psychedelic pop-style of "I Feel Free", "Wrapping Paper" has a distinctive slow jazz-like style. The song reflects the band's iconoclastic persona, their desire to confuse their audience, their interest in the absurdist art movement of the time, and refusal to fit into musical categories.

Sunshine Of Your Love

"Sunshine of Your Love" is a 1967 song by the British rock band Cream. It is the second track on their second album Disraeli Gears and was released as its second single in December 1967.

With elements of hard rock and psychedelia, it is one of Cream's best known and most popular songs.

Composition

In early 1967, Cream were writing and rehearsing songs for a second album. Their December 1966 debut album, Fresh Cream, had been a mix of updated blues numbers and pop-oriented rock songs. Inspired by recent developments in rock music, the group began pursuing a more overtly psychedelic direction. "Sunshine of Your Love" began as a bass phrase or riff developed by Cream bassist Jack Bruce. Bruce tended to write songs with lyricist Pete Brown during the night as that was the only time they had to spare within the band's tour schedule. In 2009, Bruce's biographer, Harry Shapiro, wrote that "after one particularly difficult night" they were struggling to create something, when Bruce played "a riff of syncopated eighth notes all on the...

Recording

Cream performed their first American concerts in New York City in 1967. Robert Stigwood, the group's manager, booked them for a Murray the K package show at the RKO Manhattan Theatre from 25 March to 2 April 1967. When it was finished, Stigwood arranged for a recording session with Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Studios. Bruce and Brown had a number of new songs in various stages of development and entered the studio on 3 April. Initially, Ertegun assigned Dowd to work with the trio. Dowd had worked with many of the biggest jazz and rhythm and blues musicians in the 1950s and 1960s. However, Cream was his first exposure to extreme volume levels. The group arrived at Atlantic with their concert setup of multiple Marshall amplifiers (each...

Releases and charts

"Sunshine of Your Love" was included as the second track on Disraeli Gears, which was released in November 1967 by Reaction Records in the UK and Atco Records in the US. At first, Atco did not see the song as a single ("Strange Brew", backed with "Tales of Brave Ulysses" had been released as a single in June 1967). However, in December 1967, the label issued an edited version of the song as the second single from the album, backed with "SWLABR" (the running time was trimmed from 4:08 to 3:03).

Other recordings

Several live recordings of "Sunshine of Your Love" have been issued on Cream albums. These include a 24 October 1967 recording by the BBC (BBC Sessions), 9 March 1968 at the Winterland Ballroom (Live Cream Volume II), and 26 November 1968 at the Royal Albert Hall (Cream's Farewell Concert). A recording from Cream's reunion show on 3 May 2005 is included on Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005. During their post-Cream careers, Clapton and Bruce recorded several live performances of the song.

White Room

"White Room" is a song by British rock band Cream, composed by bassist Jack Bruce with lyrics by poet Pete Brown. Cream recorded it for the studio half of the 1968 double album Wheels of Fire.

In September, a shorter US single edit was released for AM radio stations, although album-oriented FM radio stations played the full album version. The subsequent UK single release in January 1969 used the full-length album version of the track.

Recording and composition

Lyricist Pete Brown's original idea for the song revolved around a hippie girl titled "Cinderella's Last Goodnight", but when that did not work, he dipped into an earlier eight page poem he had written about a new apartment he had moved into with white walls and bare furnishings, where he gave up drinking and drugs. The personal demons he battled while living in the white room spawned the imagery of the poem, which was eventually whittled down to a few verses for the song lyric.

Recognition and other recordings

Rolling Stone ranked "White Room" at number 376 on its list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". A live recording appears on the group's Live Cream Volume II album (1972). Clapton, along with Phil Collins, began his act at Live Aid in 1985 with the song. In 1990, Clapton performed the song at his Royal Albert Hall concert series and in 1999 with Sheryl Crow at Crow's Sheryl Crow and Friends: Live from Central Park concert. In 2005, the reunited Cream played the song at the Royal Albert Hall, which was released on their Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005 album.