Eric Clapton - The Delaney Mix of the First Album (1970)

In late 1969 and early 1970 Eric Clapton recorded a number of songs in Los Angeles and London, in preparation for his first solo album release. His backing band for most of the sessions was the one used by his good friends Delaney and Bonnie when they toured with Blind Faith - one of whom was a pre- Derek And The Dominos Bobby Whitlock. Once the recordings were complete he asked Delaney Bramlett to mix the album for him, and waited for the results. Due to a misunderstanding between them, Delaney was waiting for Clapton to send over one more song to be added to the mix, while Clapton was waiting for the mixed album to be sent back before sendng the final song. After waiting a few weeks and hearing nothing, Clapton mixed it himself, but was very unsatisfied with the results, so the record company employed Tom Down to mix it, and that is the version which was released. When Clapton eventually got to hear Delaney's mix he said that it was by far his favourite, but it was too late to change as the record had been pressed. The Delaney mix is significantly different in a number of areas, with more reverb on Clapton's voice - which he always thought was too thin on Dowd's mix - and the guitars and horns being more prominent on some songs. It's probably only the super-fan who will notice the differences straight away, and they've most likely already heard this mix on the Deluxe re-issue, but for the casual fan the whole album seems to have a bit more punch to it. 

Track listing

01 Slunky
02 Bad Boy
03 Lonesome And A Long Way From Home
04 After Midnight
05 Easy Now
06 Blues Power
07 Bottle Of Red Wine
08 Lovin' You Lovin' Me
09 Told You For The Last Time
10 Don't Know Why
11 Let It Rain

For some unknown reason the cover of the original bootleg had a picture of Bob Seger on it instead of Eric (they both had beards?...who knows) so I've replaced it with an alternate picture from the first album photo session.