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| JJ Cale |
The roads into new music are
sometimes improbable and unexpected.
In 1978, after a year in
India, I took up residence in a rooming house in Dinkytown, that rather famous
little neighborhood in Minneapolis, where Bob
Dylan played his earliest public shows. The same day I moved in, the room
across the hallway got a new resident too. He was an Iranian who’d recently
arrived from the UK and his older brother asked me to make him feel
welcome. The thought of someone who
shared a non-American perspective on life appealed to me and Navid and I hit it off. Over the next
12 years he and I had jobs together, fell out and came back together, shared
our homes with each other, drove cabs for the same company and saw each other
get married and have sons.
The basis of our friendship
centered on politics and music. It was the last days of the Shah when we met
and I immediately became immersed in the fevered political discussions of Navid and his circle of Iranian
friends. In our small smoke filled rooms I listened as they debated the pros
and cons of Khomeini and the communists and the royalists. Interestingly, in
all of those nights and weeks of conversations and arguments they never ever
played any Iranian music. I learned nothing about Iranian singers or music. All we listened to was rock n roll.
Navid
sneered at my music collection. One of our first fights came right after he
walked into my room and turned off my stereo as it was playing a Dan Fogelberg record. I was incensed.
“Who gave you the right?” I asked. “Who gave you the right to listen to shit?”
he shot back.
All he could talk about was Genesis, Eric Clapton, Gordon Giltrap, Pink
Floyd, Peter Gabriel and Jethro
Tull. As a rule he ignored American music and preferred British rock ‘n’
roll. I resisted, more out of spite than anything else and tried to push the
virtues of The Eagles. Somehow we remained friends.
One day he brought an album
into my room and excitedly put it on the turntable. It was the one I share
tonight, Troubador by JJ Cale. Here, at last was something I
could get into. The laid back guitar stylings and whispered vocals immediately
hit a chord. I’d never heard anything like him and for once I didn’t mind when Navid played the record a second time.
I loved Travelin’ Light, Navid, raved about Cherry. We had a hit on our hands and a certain trust was
established. I was henceforth more open to his suggestions and eventually came
to love Peter Gabriel and Gordon Giltrap and Camel. He never got Dan
Fogelberg but JJ Cale proved to
him that Americans could make good music even if their politicians supported a
corrupt regime.
With
his laid-back rootsy style, J.J. Cale
is 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 cult following with his sporadically released recordings.
Born in
Oklahoma City but raised in Tulsa, OK, Cale
played in a variety of rock & roll bands and Western swing groups as a
teenager, including one outfit that also featured Leon Russell. In 1959, at the age of 21, he moved to Nashville,
where he was hired by the Grand Ole Opry's touring company. After a few years,
he returned to Tulsa, where he reunited with Russell and began playing local clubs. In 1964, Cale and Russell moved
to Los Angeles with another local Oklahoma musician, Carl Radle.
Shortly after he arrived in Los Angeles, Cale began playing with Delaney & Bonnie. He only played
with the duo for a brief time, beginning a solo career in 1965. That year, he
cut the first version of "After Midnight," which would become his
most famous song. Around 1966, Cale
formed the Leathercoated Minds with
songwriter Roger Tillison. The group
released a psychedelic album called A Trip Down Sunset Strip the same year.
Deciding that he wouldn't be able to forge a career in Los Angeles, Cale returned to Tulsa in 1967. Upon
his return, he set about playing local clubs. Within a year, he had recorded a
set of demos. Radle obtained a copy
of the demos and forwarded it to Denny
Cordell, who was founding a record label called Shelter with Leon Russell. Shelter signed Cale in 1969. The following year, Eric Clapton recorded "After
Midnight," taking it to the American Top 20 and thereby providing Cale with needed exposure and
royalties. In December 1971, Cale
released his debut album, Naturally, on Shelter Records; the album featured the
Top 40 hit "Crazy Mama," as well as a re-recorded version of
"After Midnight," which nearly reached the Top 40, and "Call Me
the Breeze," which Lynyrd Skynyrd
later covered. Cale followed
Naturally with Really, which featured the minor hit "Lies," later
that same year.
Following the release of Really, J.J. Cale adopted a slow work schedule, releasing an album every
other year or so. Okie, his third album, appeared in 1974. Two years later, he
released Troubadour, which yielded "Hey Baby," his last minor hit, as
well as the original version of "Cocaine," a song that Clapton would later cover. By this
point, Cale had settled into a
comfortable career as a cult artist and he rarely made any attempt to break
into the mainstream.
So Navid, wherever
you are, thanks for the introduction to this great album all those years ago.
Track Listing:
01 Hey Baby
02 Travelin' Light
03 You Got Something
04 Ride Me High
05 Hold On
06 Cocaine
07 I'm A Gypsy Man
08 The Woman That Got Away
09 Super Blue
10 Let Me Do It To You
11 Cherry
12 You Got Me On So Bad
