When Clapton recorded and released his 'Unplugged' few years ago, he made wonderful covers of both Robert Johnson's Malted Milk and Walking Blues. The result was absolutely brilliant. I had not heard a more inspired, passionate,soulful Clapton in years.
I would say that the opposite is true of 'Me and Mr. Johnson'. Leaving aside why Clapton decided to record the 14 songs he chose instead of Rambling on My Mind, I'm a steady Rollin'Man, and so on; the record has a major problem.
There's no energy, there's no strength, there's no passion. If you listen to Robert Johnson's original recording they're phenomenlly powerful. In Clapton's rendition, those very same song almost put you to sleep.
Love in Vain is a perfect case in point. It is a very powerful song, one of those songs that strikes some chords inside you. Robert Johnson created that magic, the Rolling Stones were able to preserve that magic in their cover, but all the magic is lost with Clapton. Love in Vain is almost boring. Clapton is a great guitar player and great bluesman, but the arrangements he chose for this record are terrible. They take all the energy away from these great great songs. What a disaster.

Clapton plays it safe here with some very laid back blues playing reminiscent of his late 70's early 80's recordings. The production is slick and commercial with no rough edges to the sound, almost "overproduced" (hardly a quality for anyone who is a blues "purist"). All the instruments are mixed equally with no particular musician upfront in the mix; consequently this is not a "Clapton guitar" album. If anything Clapton's vocals are the most prominent feature here. I give Eric credit, he has become an above average singer and it shows on this release. His vocals are very smooth and soulful. Billy Preston contributes some fine piano, too bad Billy couldn't have taken over the vocal chores on a song or two. If you've been a Clapton fan since his Yardbirds & Bluesbreakers days, chances are you'll be more than a little disappointed here (you gotta get John Mayall's 70th Birthday Concert with both Clapton & Mick Taylor). If "Unplugged" is your favorite (and first) Clapton album, chances are you'll really enjoy this recording.

Personally, I find it a bit too "commercial" for my blood. The music is better suited for an elevator ride rather than a Southside Chicago Blues Club. The blues is emotion & passion. This album comes off a little too "blues-by-numbers", lacking in the above to qualities. Clapton's vocals on "Ramblin' On My Mind" from the Bluesbreaker's album have 10 times the emotion shown here. I would not use the term "restraint" in reference to this release as much as the term "record sales". It reminds me of the story about a young British Blues Guitarist who left his band back in the mid-60's because he thought they were getting too commmercial.

With all the hoolpa this cd has received, one is atonsihed by the absolute nonsense of some of the rock critics who rave about this. Much of this collection of performances of songs that Robert Johnson recorded is on the level of a bar band doing Robert Johnson. None of Clapton's renditions of these songs match those by Robert Lockwood, Johnny Shines, Honeyboy Edwards, Big Joe Williams, Junior Wells, Eddie Taylor, Boyd Gilmore, Muddy Waters and others who have taken Johnson's songs and produced recordings that are more passionately and personally performed. Clapton is too reverent to these songs and the lyrics which is strange for a homage to Johnson whose own work adapted and transformed his contemporaries music as Elijah Wald details in his recent book. Check out Leroy Carr's In the Evening before listening to Robert Johnson's Love in Vain and Clapton's rendition pales compared to the Stones' cover of it three decades ago. Both Junior Wells and Eddie Taylor had standout recordings of Stop Breakin' Down that makes Clapton's rendition here sound not very distinguished. Call Clapton a rock guitar god all you want and a great popularizer of the blues, but when you have assimilated not simply Johnson's music but also the great bluesmen of the past fifty years, than Clapton's achievement is clearly overstated. One other point was that I was not enamored by the studio band. There are some great players (and Mr. Portnoy is a great harp player), but the rhythm section does not swing and they sound second rate comapred to some of the classic Chicago bands of the sixties and seventies.

Eric Clapton has been introducing the "Blues" to new audiences for almost his entire life. Early in his career, he could take an obsure blues song like "Crossroads" and make it into a rock hit. A number of Robert Johnson's songs were recorded in the corner of a hotel room on ancient equipment. These harsh sounding, yet powerful performances can send chills up your spine. Sadly, "Me and Mr. Johnson" is just plain boring to listen to. The song arrangements stay mostly faithful to the original recordings, but there are too many instruments on them. The band contains some fine musicians, but they sound so polished and lifeless. Clapton's playing is competent as usual, but it lacks the enthusiam that used to set him apart from all his peers.

Right off the bat, it's pretty presumptuous for Eric Clapton to list himself first in the title. Maybe I am nit-picking, but I think "Mr. Johnson and Me" sounds better and shows props by putting the real bluesman's name first.
That said, the music on this CD is self-indulgent, pasteurized, homogenized, smoothed-over white-boy blues without a scintilla of character, emotion, soul or meaning. It is criminally bland. Clapton is arguably one of the great guitar geniuses of the last 50 years, but if he is, he doesn't show it here. Blues is supposed to sweat, moan, scream, and even mumble sometimes; Clapton just plays and sings by the numbers. This music wouldn't unsettle a postage stamp.
That whirring noise you hear is Mr. Johnson spinning in his grave.