JJ Cale – After Midnight

John Weldon Cale (December 5, 1938 – July 26, 2013), professionally known as J.J. Cale, was an American singer-songwriter, recording artist and influential guitar stylist.

Though he deliberately avoided the limelight (being temperamentally averse to celebrity) his influence as a musical artist has been widely acknowledged by figures such as Mark Knopfler, Neil Young and Eric Clapton who described him as “one of the most important artists in the history of rock”. He is considered to be one of the originators of the Tulsa Sound, a loose genre drawing on blues, rockabilly, country, and jazz.

Many songs written by Cale have been recorded by other artists, including “After Midnight” and “Cocaine” by Eric Clapton; “Call Me the Breeze” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Mayer, Johnny Cash and Bobby Bare; “Clyde” by Waylon Jennings and Dr. Hook; “I Got The Same Old Blues” by Captain Beefheart, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Freddie King; and “Magnolia” by Beck, Lucinda Williams and Iron and Wine and Ben Bridwell.

In 2008 he, along with Clapton, received a Grammy Award for their album, The Road to Escondido.

John Cale was born on December 5, 1938, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and graduated from Tulsa Central High School in 1956.

As well as learning to play the guitar he began studying the principles of sound engineering early on while still living at home with his parents in Tulsa where he built himself a recording studio.After graduation he was drafted into military service studying at the Air Force Institute of Technology in Champaign, Illinois.

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