Songfacts®:

• Mr. Slowhand wrote this song as a tribute to some of the music he heard as a youth. Clapton told BBC Radio in 1998: "Writing that song was just simply tuning back in to music in my teens. I was listening to folk music and the more I listened to that, I got deeply moved and influenced by Bluegrass and Appalachian music, especially the sort of field recordings that were available.
  
  In the old days, you used to be able to go buy records on a label called Folkways. They'd have unknown people on there just playing five-string banjos, people who probably just recorded in their homes. They would just have this incredible power and sound. It was unsophisticated and crude and raw. Writing that song was tuning back into that part of my musical heritage." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  DeeTheWriter - Saint Petersburg, Russia Federation