John Weldon Cale was an American singer, songwriter and musician born December 5th, 1938, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA. He died of a heart attack on July 26th, 2013, at Scripps Hospital in
La Jolla, CA, USA. Professionally known as J.J. Cale, he was an American singer-songwriter, recording artist and influential guitar stylist. Though he deliberately avoided the limelight (being temperamentally averse to celebrity) his influence as a musical artist has been widely acknowledged by figures such as Mark Knopfler, Neil Young and Eric Clapton who described him as “one of the most important artists in the history of rock”. He is considered to be one of the originators of the Tulsa Sound, a loose genre drawing on blues, rockabilly, country and jazz.
With his laid-back rootsy style, J.J. Cale was best-known for writing "After Midnight" and "Cocaine,"
songs that Eric Clapton later made into hits. But Cale's influence wasn't only through songwriting -- his distinctly loping sense of rhythm and shuffling boogie became the blueprint for the adult-oriented roots rock of Clapton and Mark Knopfler, among others.
Cale's refusal to vary the sound of his music over the course of his career caused some critics to label
him as a one-trick pony, but he managed to build a dedicated following with his sporadically released recordings, several of which, including four singles between 1972 and 1976, entered the Top 100. While Naturally, his 1972 full-length, placed a respectable number 51 on the Top 200, it was The Road to Escondido, his 2006 collaborative album with Clapton, that charted highest at 23, won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album, and was Cale's first RIAA-certified gold record.
Cale's songs have been covered by everyone from Lynyrd Skynyrd and Clapton to Neil Young
and the Allman Brothers, to Beck, John Mayer, and Band of Horses, to name a few, and have been used extensively in film and television. After Cale passed in 2013, Clapton gathered a group of like-minded friends and musicians for The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale. The album, released one year later, was loaded with high-profile guests and charted inside the Top Ten in seven countries.
NATURALLY 1971
J.J. Cale's debut album, Naturally, was recorded after Eric Clapton made "After Midnight" a huge success. Instead of following Slowhand's cue and constructing a slick blues-rock album, Cale recruited a number of his Oklahoma friends and made a laid-back country-rock record that firmly established his
distinctive, relaxed style. Cale included a new version of "After Midnight" on the album, but the true meat of the record lay in songs like "Crazy Mama," which became a hit single, and "Call Me the Breeze," which Lynyrd Skynyrd later covered. On these songs and many others on Naturally, Cale effortlessly captured a lazy, rolling boogie that contradicted all the commercial styles of boogie, blues, and country-rock at the time. Where his contemporaries concentrated on solos, Cale worked the song and its rhythm, and the result was a pleasant, engaging album that was in no danger of raising anybody's temperature.
by Thom Owens
J.J. Cale – Naturally
Label: Mercury – 830 042-2
Format: CD, Album, Reissue
Country: Europe
Released: ?
Genre: Rock
Style: Folk Rock, Blues Rock
TRACKS
01. Call Me The Breeze 2:34
02. Call The Doctor 2:25
03. Don't Go To Strangers 2:24
04. Woman I Love 2:40
05. Magnolia 3:22
06. Clyde 2:27
07. Crazy Mama 2:30
08. Nowhere To Run 2:24
09. After Midnight 2:23
10. River Runs Deep 2:41
11. Bringing It Back 2:43
12. Crying Eyes 3:14
MP3 @ 320 Size: 74 MB
Flac Size: 170 MB
TROUBADOUR 1976
Producer Audie Ashworth introduced some different instruments, notably vibes and what sound like horns (although none are credited), for a slightly altered sound on Troubadour. But J.J. Cale's albums
are so steeped in his introspective style that they become interchangeable. If you like one of them, chances are you'll want to have them all. This one is notable for introducing "Cocaine," which Eric Clapton covered on his Slowhand album a year later.
by William Ruhlmann
J.J. Cale – Troubadour
Label: Mercury – 810 001-2
Format: CD, Album, Reissue
Country: Europe
Released: 1983
Genre: Rock, Blues
Style: Folk Rock, Blues Rock
TRACKS
01. Hey Baby 3:11
02. Travelin' Light 2:50
03. You Got Something 4:00
04. Ride Me High 3:34
05. Hold On 1:58
06. Cocaine 2:48
07. I'm A Gypsy Man 2:42
08. The Woman That Got Away 2:52
09. Super Blue 2:40
10. Let Me Do It To You 2:58
11. Cherry 3:21
12. You Got Me On So Bad 3:17
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