[SACD-R][OF] Blind Faith - Blind Faith - 1969/2016 (Blues rock; Hard rock; Folk rock)

Blind Faith is the self-titled album by the British supergroup Blind Faith, which consisted of Eric Clapton (The Yardbirds, Cream), Ginger Baker (Graham Bond Organisation, Cream), Steve Winwood (Spencer Davis Group, Traffic) and Ric Grech (Family). There was an intense buzz about the band and its debut album Blind Faith, which on release topped Billboard’s Pop Albums chart in America (as it did the UK and Canadian charts) and peaked at #40 on the Black Albums chart, an impressive feat for a British rock quartet. In addition, Rolling Stone published three reviews of the album in their September 6, 1969 issue, which were written by Ed Leimbacher, Lester Bangs, and John Morthland.
They began to work out songs early in 1969, and in February and March the group was in London at Morgan Studios, preparing for the beginnings of basic tracks for their album, although the first few almost finished songs didn’t show up until they were at Olympic Studios in April and May under the direction of producer Jimmy Miller. The music community was already aware of the linkup, despite Clapton’s claim that he was cutting an album of his own on which Winwood would play. The rock press wasn’t buying any of it, knowing that Baker was involved as well, and then the promoters and record companies got involved, pushing those concerned for an album and a tour.
The recording of their album was interrupted by such a tour of Scandinavia, then a U.S. tour from July 11 (Newport) to August 24 (Hawaii), supported by Free, Taste and Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. Although a chart topper the LP was recorded hurriedly and side two consisted of just two songs, one of them a 15-minute jam entitled “Do What You Like.” Nevertheless the band was able to produce two classic hits, Winwood’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” and Clapton’s “Presence of the Lord”.
An expanded, deluxe edition of the album was released in 2001, with previously unreleased tracks and ‘jams’ included. Two live tracks from the Hyde Park concert, Sleeping In The Ground by Sam Myers and the Rolling Stones song “Under My Thumb” are also available on Winwood’s four-CD retrospective The Finer Things.
All Music Review
Blind Faith’s first and last album, more than 30 years old and counting, remains one of the jewels of the Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, and Ginger Baker catalogs, despite the crash-and-burn history of the band itself, which scarcely lasted six months. As much a follow-up to Traffic’s self-titled second album as it is to Cream’s final output, it merges the soulful blues of the former with the heavy riffing and outsized song lengths of the latter for a very compelling sound unique to this band. Not all of it works — between the virtuoso electric blues of “Had to Cry Today,” the acoustic-textured “Can’t Find My Way Home,” the soaring “Presence of the Lord” (Eric Clapton’s one contribution here as a songwriter, and the first great song he ever authored) and “Sea of Joy,” the band doesn’t do much with the Buddy Holly song “Well All Right”; and Ginger Baker’s “Do What You Like” was a little weak to take up 15 minutes of space on an LP that might have been better used for a shorter drum solo and more songs. Unfortunately, the group was never that together as a band and evidently had just the 42 minutes of new music here ready to tour behind.