Eric Clapton's career-defining passion for blues music was sparked at age fourteen when he saw blues legend Big Bill Broonzy perform "Hey Hey" on television. The experience proved transformative, with Clapton recalling that witnessing Broonzy play made him feel like he "was looking into Heaven," inspiring him to pursue music and dedicate himself to mastering blues traditions. This pivotal moment established blues as the foundational thread throughout his entire career, despite his prominence in 1960s psychedelic rock movements.

Big Bill Broonzy's "Hey Hey" is deceptively simple—a 97-word song in which the word "hey" appears 24 times, constituting 25 per cent of the entire composition. Yet the emotional directness of the piece captivated Clapton, who subsequently explored other Broonzy classics such as "Key to the Highway," which he believed captured "the whole journey of being a musician and a travelling journeyman." Clapton's dedication to studying blues masters and perfecting their styles has resulted in estimated record sales exceeding 200 million across his various projects over decades.