[Slowhand] Crossroads...

[Richard Batty]

Nick,

Thanks for the interesting background info.  I just listened to Robert
Johnson's versions of Cross Road Blues and Terraplane Blues.  The signature
riff is so much more prominent in Terraplane than in Cross Road Blues, so it
seems to me that EC maybe took the Terraplane riff and accentuated it in his
version of Crossroads. I wonder what the timing was for this since to my
knowledge he never played it with the Yardbirds or Mayall.  If the
Powerhouse recordings were made while EC was with Mayall, it would seem
likely he would have performed it with Mayall.  But that was the time when
he wasn't very comfortable with his vocals, so maybe Ramblin' On My Mind was
EC's first tentative foray into being a vocalist as well as an
instrumentalist.

Cheers,

Rick