The good news, though this is hardly news, is that the man can still play with the best of them. The riffs might sound a bit familiar, but they're still good riffs, and his timing is excellent. More than this, Clapton is distinguished by his tone. Whether raucous or understated (as in his exquisite fills to George Harrison's "I'd Have You Anytime"), you can nearly always recognize the full, rounded sound with which he imbues his notes. On the current disk, even with the backing of two consummate session guitarists (Andy Fairweather Low and Doyle Bramhall II), it is easy to tell when Slowhand takes the spotlight.

Me and Mr. Johnson begins with a ringing, electricity-soaked descent, leading into a version of "When You Got a Good Friend" that gives Johnson's slightly anemic original a healthy infusion of juice. It’s one of the strongest cuts on the album, a steady twelve-bar shuffle that harks back to the high-wattage instrumentals, like "Snake Drive" and "Tribute to Elmore," that Clapton recorded with Jimmy Page in his Yardbirds days. Other numbers, such as "Little Queen of Spades," with its moody organ washes by Billy Preston, and "Milkcow's Calf Blues," take advantage of their powerhouse backing to apply a heightened layer of atmosphere onto Johnson's spare canvases. And "32-20 Blues," though recast in jump mode, offers an interesting pilgrimage back to Skip James's piano-driven original ("22-20 Blues").

Oddly enough, where Me and Mr. Johnson shows its weaknesses is in Johnson's strongest compositions. Johnson's greatest accomplishment in performance was his ability to use his lone acoustic guitar to the fullest — not only sounding at times as if there were three of him playing, but also chiming in just the right notes, combined with his well calibrated vocals, to wring the full emotional content out of his songs. Pieces like "Come On in My Kitchen," "Cross Road Blues," "Love in Vain," and "Kindhearted Woman Blues" are classics not only because of the songs themselves, but because Johnson's delivery of them seems to get to the heart of what those songs are. In the crowded field of Delta blues musicians — and by the mid-1930s, when Johnson recorded, that field was crowded indeed — he stands out like no other. Although by no means the most proficient blues guitarist or singer of his day, he put a quality into his performances — a drive, a charisma, a seduction, call it what you will — that defies comparison with virtually all of his peers. Perhaps the word for it is spirit, taken in its root sense of "animating vapor" or (to drag out an overused term) "soul." It is precisely this spirit that is lacking in Clapton's album, for all its manifest sincerity. And nowhere is this more evident than in the last cut (the placement already speaks volumes), "Hellhound on My Trail."