After Midnight: After Midnight

JJ Cale: After Midnight

[purchase]

I'm unafraid to post the obvious this week, given how rare it is after all these years: JJ Cale's '71 version of his own composition After Midnight, first recorded as a demo in '66 and subsequently made famous by Sir Eric Clapton.

Thanks to pop radio repetition, After Midnight generally clings to the cultural memory in Clapton's fast-paced runaway train cocaine tones, but Cale's take on the song remains my favorite by far: bluesy and blurred with muted tictoc drumkit and guitar strings, aided and abetted by subtle barrelhouse piano, yet quiet enough not to wake the house. If you've never heard the "original", prepare to be surprised by its sultry subtleties.

Oh Mama : Blues For Mama

J.J. Cale: Blues For Mama

[purchase]

For this Mama week, being a roots music fan, I had a great choice. After narrowing down to twenty-some songs, I decided to hit "shuffle" and see what came out.

It was the sad song of the lot. But also one of the most moving songs of JJ Cale, from his come-back 2004 album To Tulsa and Back. I don't know if he lost his mother or any close relative prior to the recording, but you don't do this kind of mourning song for pleasure, I guess...

I've always loved Cale's sense of economy. No endless guitar solos, but a few notes, full of feeling, a few words too. People like Clapton or Mark Knolpfer owe him a lot.

Johns: J. J. Cale vs. John Cale

J. J. Cale: Closer To You

[purchase]

John Cale: Adelaide

[purchase]

According to our usual sources, John W. Cale changed his name to "J. J." way back in the mid sixties at the urging of a "sunset strip nightclub owner" so as not to be confused with John Cale of the Velvet Underground. To be honest, it's hard to mistake the former Cale's seminal swamp of laidback southern/cajun bluesrock, which helped define the Tulsa Sound, for any of the various genre incarnations, from seventies folk-pop to the stylized artrock and protopunk of the eighties and nineties, that the latter Cale turned to after leaving the Velvet Underground at the end of that same decade. But I suppose it would be a bit startling to show up at some venue expecting to hear J.J.'s expansive, improvisational original takes on the songs that made other people famous -- Clapton's After Midnight and Cocaine, Lynard Skynard's Call Me The Breeze -- only to be confronted with a weird dude playing noisy experimental dronerock on the electric viola.

More likely comparisons would put J. J. Cale against fellow guitarslinging bluesrock jamsmen Clapton and Mark Knopfler, while the vast bulk of the work of John Cale might be more easily confusable with anyone from John Cage to Patti Smith, both of whom he's collaborated with in the past. That said, John Cale's early work has a bit of the same summery rock and roll sound that has made J. J.'s career, and J.J.'s not afraid to experiment. Here's the evidence for both.