My brother the drummer emailed me with this news several days ago. I was about to post it here when I saw this thread.

Capaldi, I now learn, was little brother Paul's greatest single influence as a drummer ~ something I had not known before.

Paul is ten years younger than I am, so we didn't really grow up together. I knew that he spent his high school years working in an R&B trio with a couple of grown-up black men, not with other white teenagers in a "garage band" situation, and so I didn't ever think he was greatly influenced by the current rock/pop music of the time. Reading his "in memoriam" appreciation of Jim Capaldi, however, I learned how many hours he spent playing along with records in our parents' basement, and how very much effort he put into emulating Jim Capaldi's work with Traffic ~ especially the dazzling cymbal technique which became a hallmark of Paul's eventual style.

I'll have to go back and listen to those Traffic albums again, with fresh ears.

By the way, in relation to the current discussion of the Cream reunion, Paul also offered a couple of remarks about how far superior he has always considered Jim Capaldi to the more widely lionized Ginger Baker...