Cream consists of Eric Clapton (guitars, vocals), Ginger Baker (drums), Jack Bruce (bass, vocals).
Cream (also "The Cream") was a seminal 1960s British rock band which featured guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce, and drummer Ginger Baker.
Celebrated as one of the first great power trios and supergroups of rock, their sound was characterised by a melange of blues and psychedelia, combining Clapton's mastery of the genre with the airy voice of Jack Bruce and, at times, manic rhythms of Ginger Baker. The drug-influenced imagery and ambience of the time abounds. Cream epitomised the high energy sound of the time, anchored in a familiar blues style; from the traditional blues classics such as "Crossroads" and "Born Under a Bad Sign," through more eccentric imagery found in "Strange Brew" and "Tales of Brave Ulysses," and culminating in the protracted indulgences of "Spoonful" and "Toad". Their biggest hits were " I Feel Free", " Sunshine of Your Love", " White Room", " Crossroads", and " Badge". The latter song was co-written by Clapton and George Harrison, who played guitar on the recording under the pseudonym 'L'Angelo Misterioso' for contractual reasons. The late Felix Pappalardi, producer (and later member of Mountain), sometimes called the 'fourth member' of Cream, is featured heavily on the Disraeli Gears album, notable for its striking design by Martin Sharp. British poet Pete Brown wrote the lyrics to many of the band's songs and was another important contributor.
While their studio work and songwriting were therefore relatively formal, in a live setting Cream were almost a completely different band, improvising constantly, with songs regularly surpassing the 20 minute mark. This gained them a reputation as (along with The Grateful Dead) the first jam band. Much of this stemmed from Bruce and Baker's origins as jazz musicians, although during an interview on The South Bank Show in the late 1980s Clapton attributed the extending soloing to their unwillingness or inability to stop playing and because none of the trio was officially the bandleader with the authority to rein in the other two. Bruce has stated that without Clapton's influence the band would more likely have played a kind of jazz, although what they played in concert was indeed jazz-rock fusion, and Baker commented in a 2005 interview (included with the Cream reunion DVD) that he and Bruce consider Clapton a jazz musician, even if Clapton himself doesn't.