JJ Cale spent the ’80s in a trailer in California. Not because he had to, but because he wanted to. The 70s had made him a songwriter adored by Eric Clapton, George Harrison and Neil Young, but Cale didn’t give a damn about the supposed laws of the music business. The fact that he only achieved success in middle age may be one of the reasons for this. “For me, independence means that you can do whatever you want. No one tells you what to do, you don’t have to answer to anyone.” When Cale said those words to the filmmakers, who accompanied him on a tour of the USA in 2004, he was already 65 years old. Time had honed his mantra.
No ambitions
JJ Cale was born on December 5th in Oklahoma City, but spent his childhood and teenage years in neighboring Tulsa. In the 1920s and 1930s, the city was an oil hotspot in the American Midwest, making it as American as a city could be at the time. What was true of capitalism was always true of music. Geographically, it was well placed to be influenced by jazz and blues from the southern states, coupled with country from Nashville and the endless expanses of the American heartland. John Weldon Cale was well aware of this and took advantage of it. However, it was only through rock ‘n’ roll that he became serious about music when he was a teenager and reluctantly went to high school, which he graduated from in 1956.
A “real job” was actually mandatory for the son from a humble background, but Cale did not want to give in to this requirement. “I never had any ambitions, I didn’t dream, and that’s how I am today,” he said in the 2005 documentary “To Tulsa and Back.” “Back then I had no plan, I had no idea that I would be in the future music business would be. I didn’t know what the music business was at all. I just hung out. Mainly I was trying to avoid work.”
Go West
With mandatory military service, Cale preferred to maintain technology in the Air Force rather than run through the mud with a gun. In addition to avoiding the drill instructor, he was able to expand his knowledge of electrical engineering after he had already built a small recording studio in his parents’ home. Back in Tulsa, Cale played in every club and bar that would let him play. Mostly covers with Elvis impersonators, but also in groups, they dressed up as cowboys and sang about life in the country with harsh slang, which was more like a play than a concert. What all of these gigs had in common was that they were poorly paid or not paid at all.
In the early 1960s, Los Angeles, with its studios and record companies, seemed like a more promising place to somehow survive as a musician. If there was anyone who owned a car, you jumped into the back seat and were washed up on the beach of dreams in Hollywood.
“It was a wonderful time for me, I loved the whole hippie thing,” Cale later said. “I was always broke and never made any money,” it was said at the same time. “It always seemed like you were a day away from jail. We drank a lot of whiskey and took a lot of drugs. You can do that when you’re young, but you have to be careful.” It was the time of his youth that he carried with him as a glorification throughout his life.
The name JJ Cale
One evening, Cale went to Whiskey A Go Go on Sunset Boulevard to meet an acquaintance who had landed one of the coveted regular gigs. He talked his way into getting a slot himself on less busy days. The Velvet Underground already had a John Cale, so the club’s promoter suggested the name JJ Cale. “If you give me a job, you can call me whatever you want,” was the reply. It didn’t last long. The occasional gigs and temporary work as a sound engineer in the city’s studios weren’t enough to afford a roof over his head. The surf took away the driftwood that had washed up.
Once again JJ Cale returned to Tulsa, the story seemed to be over. As luck would have it, around 1970 Delaney Bramlett exerted considerable influence on Eric Clapton, who was on the threshold of a solo career. Bramlett and Cale knew each other from the studios and clubs of Los Angeles, and Bramlett was one of the recipients to whom Cale sent a demo tape for a song that few people were interested in at the time: “After Midnight.”
An unforeseen turn of events
Bramlett was among the handful of musicians who caught “After Midnight.” The same goes for Carl Radle, bassist and member of Bramlett’s band, who grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The song appeared on Clapton’s first solo album, which also featured Radle. He became a hit. JJ Cale then spent the 70s in the wake of the music industry, he allowed himself to be dragged along, making albums in Nashville under the direction of Audie Ashworth, who in between found time to inform Cale’s family that their offspring was now a sought-after songwriter. The gamblers in the record labels and publishing houses were licking their fingers, while Cale’s parents and sister were completely clueless. JJ Cale didn’t care about his success.
This didn’t change after the release of “Cocaine”. Eric Clapton saw the song as Cale’s subtle criticism of the coke factory, without being too obviously anti. “If you want to get down, down on the ground – cocaine,” the second line of the song, contains the essential message, although it avoids the ambiguity of the lyrics that someone feels the index finger on their chest, according to Clapton. A habitus that was completely alien to Cale. But if anyone can literally tell you the toll cocaine takes to excess, it’s Eric Clapton.
Eric Clapton for an audience with JJ Cale
To claim that Cale’s career – or anti-career – is based solely on Clapton’s affection is still greatly reductive. Arguing the other way around doesn’t even seem completely absurd. When their only album together, “The Road to Escondido,” was released in 2006, Clapton said he was proud to work with Cale. His old friend gave him access to so much fame and great music, and he hopes that JJ Cale might be able to get something out of his own songs. So Clapton contacted Cale to see if he would be interested in an album under both names. “No matter how hard I tried, I could never really get an album to sound like him,” Clapton said of his motives. “Before I go underground, I want to do a JJ Cale album with him.”
And they did. Guest musicians such as John Mayer, Nathan East and Billy Preston took part in the recordings. The songs mostly came from JJ Cale. While the album sold millions of copies worldwide and won a Grammy for “Best Contemporary Blues Album,” the taciturn Cale may have noted its success in passing. For Eric Clapton – who had already become a museum of himself by this point – it was his best work since his MTV Unplugged concert in 1992.
The death of JJ Cale
By the new millennium, JJ Cale’s appearances were few and far between, as were his publications. “Roll On” was his last studio album during his lifetime, released in 2009, before he died on July 26, 2013 as a result of a heart attack. He was 74 years old. ROLLING STONE editor Arne Willander wrote in his obituary:
“Among American songwriters, JJ Cale was an invisible giant. Music journalists worked on him, but apparently there was no secret about the loner: He was somehow always there, lived in Los Angeles, wrote very relaxed songs and played the guitar in a way that one would call “laid back”. “) called. A Danish duo that sang the summer hit “Sunshine Reggae” later named themselves that way. Cale was always a little behind the beat: That’s a nice metaphor for a late starter who calmly followed the mainstream and didn’t care where the music was playing. When “Cocaine” came out, you heard disco and punk. Cale had his own time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wJDd_uu1JI
His singing was a knotty, utilitarian instrument with lyrics about friends, roads, nature, weather, and sensitivities – the kind of things you think about when you’re sitting in a rocking chair on a verada with nothing to do except, maybe, a lemonade to drink. In 1972, Cale could have taken his song “Crazy Mama” higher on the charts if he had appeared on the popular “American Bandstand.” But he couldn’t get his band together and he wouldn’t move his lips to the playback. So it stayed at number 22. And because JJ Cale not only didn’t like to travel, but practically didn’t travel at all, he missed all the promotional appearances, concerts and television shows that make lesser people famous.