Remembering J.J. Cale, Virtuoso Guitarist and Author of ‘Cocaine’ and ‘After Midnight,’ with a 1979 Concert

J.J. Cale died on Fri­day. Cale was one of the great­est and most influ­en­tial gui­tar play­ers of the rock and roll era. “Of all the play­ers I ever heard,” said Neil Young, “it’s got­ta be Hen­drix and J.J. Cale who are the best elec­tric gui­tar play­ers.”

It’s hard to imag­ine a musi­cian more dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to Jimi Hen­drix than Cale, who was the mas­ter of nuance and under­state­ment. Per­haps the best word to describe his coun­try swing-inflect­ed gui­tar play­ing would be “cool.” The restrained dynam­ics, the del­i­cate touch — Cale’s play­ing demand­ed close atten­tion and sen­si­tiv­i­ty in a lis­ten­er. His vocals, too, were kept way down in the mix, a reflec­tion of his intro­vert­ed per­son­al­i­ty. “The effort­less­ness, that restraint and under­play­ing, under-singing — it was just very pow­er­ful,” said pop musi­cian Beck to the Los Ange­les Times in 2009. “The pow­er of doing less and hold­ing back in a song, I’ve tak­en a lot of influ­ence from that.”

Per­haps the great­est exem­plar of Cale’s wide influ­ence was Eric Clap­ton, who made hits out of two pre­vi­ous­ly obscure songs writ­ten by Cale — “After Mid­night” and “Cocaine” — and pat­terned much of his ’70s music after the Tul­sa Sound Cale helped cre­ate. When asked by Van­i­ty Fair to name the liv­ing per­son he most admired, Clap­ton was unequiv­o­cal: J.J. Cale. “In my hum­ble opin­ion,” Clap­ton wrote in his 2007 auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “he is one of the most impor­tant artists in the his­to­ry of rock, qui­et­ly rep­re­sent­ing the great­est asset his coun­try has ever had.”

To remem­ber Cale and his artistry, we bring you a 1979 video (above) of Cale and his band play­ing live at Rain­bow Stu­dios in Los Ange­les with his old friend and fel­low Okla­homan Leon Rus­sell. Here’s the set list:

1. “T‑Bone Shuf­fle” (pro­logue)
2. “Nowhere to Run”
3. “Cocaine”
4. “Ten Easy Lessons”
5. “Sen­si­tive kind”
6. “Hands Off Her”
7. “Lou-Easy-Ann”
8. “Going Down”
9. “Cori­na Cori­na”
10. “Roll On”
11. “No Sweat”
12. “Crazy Mama”
13. “Fate of a Fool”
14. “Boilin’ Pot”
15. “After Mid­night”
16. “T‑Bone Shuf­fle”
17. “T‑Bone Back­wards”
18. “Same Old Blues”
19. “Don’t Cry Sis­ter”
20. “Set Your Soul Free (Tell Me Who You Care)”
21. “24 Hours a Day”