Fresh Cream: Rock icons’ sons take the Clearwater stage

In rock music, the prototype of the power trio – guitar, bass and drums – has always been Cream, the celebrated British threesome that began in 1966 as a blues/rock powerhouse and quickly evolved into an era-defining purveyor of psychedelia and heavy rock. And by ’69, they were through.

Cream (Clapton, left, Baker and Bruce). Photo: Atco Records.

Cream was Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass and vocals, and Ginger Baker on drums. Virtuosos all.

Bruce’s son Malcolm, Baker’s son Kofi, and guitarist Ron Johnson (a grandnephew of Ginger Baker) are Sons of Cream, booked to open Clearwater’s Sea-Blues Festival Friday, Feb. 28 in Coachman Park.

Malcolm Bruce is a guitar and piano player who’s recorded and toured with many major artists (including his father, who died in 2014). In Sons of Cream, he’s on bass and vocals.

This is not, he insists, a tribute act. “We’re re-inventing the music through improvisation,” Bruce tells the Catalyst. “So in a way, it’s as fresh as it ever was.

“We’re taking these songs to starting points of improvisation, and we go off on our own journey on that. So we’re not copying the solos, or copying it note for note, or dressing up like our parents.”

Still, there’s a formidable model to emulate. “It’s such an incredible legacy, and it’s had such a massive influence on myself and Kofi that there’s almost like a sense of responsibility to pay tribute to it,” Bruce explains. “I don’t want to get stuck in doing this music for the rest of my life or something, but in a way it’s very much alive – people think of classic rock as something that’s kind of archaic, and staid, and from the past.

Kofi Baker.

“But as Kofi says onstage, every night, our dads played it differently every night, every show was a different show because it was so much based on improvisation.”

Kofi Baker also has impeccable road credentials, and often played alongside his dad (who passed away in 2019).

Just as the members of Cream had volatile inter-personal relationship (Baker and Bruce were famously at each other’s throats much of the time), Kofi Baker and his father weren’t exactly getting along at the end.

And historically, Bruce admits, Cream is usually referred to as “one of Eric Clapton’s old bands.”

Not exactly the case. “My dad was a little upset because they’d brought out a compilation called The Cream of Eric Clapton. It’s kind of a clever play on words. But Eric himself was never like that. He was always very vocal about his respect for Ginger and Jack.”

All this, of course, is very much secondary to the music left to us – from the proto-psychedelic “White Room,” “Sunshine of Your Love” and “Tales of Brave Ulysses” to the classic blues workouts “Crossroads” and “Spoonful” that frequently turned into 20-minute jams.

“Cream,” Bruce believes, “were playing at a certain level of venue, and had a certain level of commercial success … and bands like Zeppelin came along right after that, took that infrastructure and it exploded. Financially, as well as in terms of adulation and all that stuff.”

Cream begat the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the James Gang, Rush and the others in the esteemed lineage of the power trio; indeed, Led Zeppelin and mid-period Who (each with a separate lead singer to make up a quartet) owed debts of gratitude to Bruce, Baker and Clapton and the template they provided.

Even though Cream was just three pieces, there was nothing simple about their approach to music. Clapton was steeped in the blues, Bruce was classically trained and was a veteran jazz and blues player, and Baker was himself a master mashup of jazz and African rhythms.

“I think Cream were an incredibly important band musically, so far ahead,” Malcolm Bruce says. “Most far ahead, in certain ways. They were seen as blues/rock, but there was so much more than that.

“You don’t have bands like that any more, that have all those elements and mix it together and create something that’s so intimately linked with the musicians themselves.”

Sons of Cream play at 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 28 in Coachman Park; the music continues with other performers until 10 p.m. The Sea-Blues Festival continues Saturday and Sunday (2 p.m. daily). Admission is free. Find full music schedule and all other information at this link.