If it wasn't for YouTube I'd probably never have heard JJ Cale. The man himself is an inspiration to musicians new and old and is criminally underrated despite his expansive repertoire. Despite being a 90's kid, I've always gravitated to the smooth and/or heavy riffs of classic rock and JJ Cale is definitely someone I dig. He surely should be mentioned in the same breath as the icons he inspired Clapton, Knopfler and so many more. To Tulsa And Back is a release from 2004 that I really enjoyed and had to upload. It definitely has everlasting potency and I recommend you buy it.
They used to say that the Velvet Underground never sold many records but every record they sold inspired a new band. You could say something similar about J.J. Cale, who never moved much product but did provide the sonic blueprint for Dire Straits and Eric Clapton's solo career. Cale's influence can be felt not only in those who recorded his songs (Johnny Cash, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, Waylon Jennings, The Band, Chris Smither, Poco, Santana, Widespread Panic, Captain Beefheart and Gatemouth Brown), but also in everyone who borrowed his swamp-rock sound, a counterintuitive blend that manages to be funky and laid-back at the same time. That sound is intact on To Tulsa And Back, Cale's first studio album in eight years. Though he has lived in a silver trailer in the California desert for years, Cale recorded this album in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he once hung out with Leon Russell, Carl Radle, David Gates, and the future Tractors. Tulsa old-timers such as Walt Richmond and Jim Karstein help put some funky midwestern humidity back into Cale's sun-baked music. He sings in a whispery baritone so sleepy he often seems on the verge of yawning, but don't let that fool you; his country-blues compositions are so full of shifting rhythms and slippery guitar that you can never get to the bottom of them. In an era when so much rock strains to sound more complicated than it really is, Cale's music is the exact opposite.(Source: No Depression)
