{"id":7161,"date":"2015-02-04T05:30:56","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T10:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=7161"},"modified":"2015-02-04T05:30:56","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T10:30:56","slug":"album-review-jj-cale-rewind-unreleased-recordings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/02\/04\/album-review-jj-cale-rewind-unreleased-recordings\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: JJ Cale &#8212; Rewind: Unreleased Recordings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/jjcale_rewind.jpg\" class=\"alignright\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" hspace=\"20\" vspace=\"20\" \/><\/p>\n<p>To the music-buying public at large, <strong>J.J. Cale<\/strong> is little more than a footnote. Some recognize his name and acknowledge he&#8217;s the guy who wrote two of <strong>Eric Clapton<\/strong>&#8216;s biggest hits, \u201cAfter Midnight\u201d and \u201cCocaine.\u201d Some know a bit more, and note that he also composed \u201cCall Me the Breeze\u201d (a popular <strong>Lynyrd Skynyrd<\/strong> tune). Some confuse him with ex-<strong>Velvet Underground<\/strong> viola player <strong>John Cale<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Fewer still are familiar with his own word as a recording artist. Cale released fifteen albums between the early 1970s and the end of the new century&#8217;s first decade (he passed away in 2013). A good half-dozen compilations have sought to distill his work down to single-album proportions, and for the listener new to the man&#8217;s work, any of those is a fine place to start.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"float: right; padding: 10px; width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=musoscribe-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=B00PUHEKB8&#038;asins=B00PUHEKB8&#038;linkId=QW65L3VZDFLO7XUG&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>For those interested in diving further into Cale&#8217;s music, a 2007 album titled <em>Rewind: Unreleased Recordings<\/em> provides a surprisingly complete overview of Cale&#8217;s talents. Newly reissued on vinyl, <em>Rewind<\/em> doesn&#8217;t sound at all like a collection of leftovers, discards and half-baked efforts. It&#8217;s a fully realized album, and it&#8217;s all the more remarkable this it is so, seeing as the fourteen cuts are drawn from all phases of his career.<\/p>\n<p>To those less familiar with his material, Cale&#8217;s style as showcased on <em>Rewind<\/em> will sound remarkably similar to Clapton&#8217;s laid-back, post-<strong>Derek and the Dominos<\/strong> musical persona. The mot charitable view is that when British guitarist Clapton got back to his roots, he just <em>happened<\/em> to end up sounding like Oklahoma City-born guitarist. No matter: Cale&#8217;s sound is heavily influenced with a Southern gospel\/roots sensibility, a sly, quiet shuffle style that imbues all of his work with a smoky, smoldering aura.<\/p>\n<p>As showcased on <em>Rewind<\/em>, Cale is a most understated character. Even when he rips out a wah-wah laden solo (as on \u201cSince You Said Goodbye\u201d), his musical fire quietly glows more than it licks at the sky. His countrified musical sensibility never asserts itself; his approach seems to be more along the lines of, \u201cHer&#8217;s what I&#8217;m doing. Stay and listen if you like.\u201d That approach may help for account for the man&#8217;s relatively low profile. He seemed more content to stay and play in the shadows, away from the limelight.<\/p>\n<p>While many of the first several cuts on the disc are Cale&#8217;s reinterpretations of the work of others (<strong>Randy Newman<\/strong>, Clapton, and <strong>Leon Russell<\/strong>: like-minded artists all), the second half (and in this case, second <em>side<\/em>) of <em>Rewind<\/em> is all Cale originals.<\/p>\n<p>The closest that Cale comes to high energy on <em>Rewind<\/em> is \u201cBluebird,\u201d but its uptempo vibe is more bluegrass-leaning than anything else. Pedal steel guitar is the highlight of My Baby and Me,\u201d the closest Cale gets to old-style country on this collection. \u201cLawdy Mama\u201d feels a bit like a rewrite that combines \u201cAfter Midnight\u201d and \u201cCall Me the Breeze.\u201d Though it&#8217;s a fine tune, its tail-chasing nature makes it less fulfilling listen (and perhaps explains why it went unrevealed for years).<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the 2015 vinyl reissue of <em>Rewind<\/em> doesn&#8217;t include any discographical information, so we don&#8217;t know the recording dates or years for these cuts, and the studio personnel can only be guessed at. But none of that detracts from enjoying the listening experience that is <em>Rewind: Unreleased Recordings.<\/em> Those new to Cale will get a fine introduction to his work, and further investigation will yield richer rewards. And Cale fans will want it for completeness&#8217; sake. Either way, it&#8217;s a fine record, made all the more special as a warm and wonderful sounding180-gram vinyl edition.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/the_musoscribe\">Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/icon_twitter_small.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"18\" height=\"18\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"1\" vspace=\"0\" \/> Twitter<\/a> and get notified<br \/>\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To the music-buying public at large, J.J. Cale is little more than a footnote. Some recognize his name and acknowledge he&#8217;s the guy who wrote two of Eric Clapton&#8216;s biggest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,20,62,64,65,73],"tags":[1157],"class_list":["post-7161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americana","category-country","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-jj-cale","cat-6-id","cat-20-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}