Cream – Fresh Cream

If you’ve been following #365DaysOfAlbumRecommendations at all, you’ve probably figured out that I have an abiding interest in debut albums. I’m rather obsessed with them—the good ones, the bad ones, the ones that sound nothing like later albums, and the ones that pretty much deliver everything the artist had to offer.

This is the debut album from a band that was pretty important to my musical upbringing. Thanks to my parent’s dynamite LP collection when I was growing up, I was able to work back through Clapton, Cream, The Yardbirds, John Mayall, and on back to Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, et al, and Cream definitely helped me get there, thanks in no small measure to their cover of “Spoonful” that sits on this album.

This is not the Spoonful of Charley Patton, mind you, this is the Willie Dixon vis a vis Howlin’ Wolf version, but Cream really does wonders with it, with all the menace and heat and power it ought to have.

It’s not Cream’s best record; that was still to come, but it’s a pretty remarkable debut.