J. J. CALE - REWIND

An artist, a song, a group of musicians, a producer, and a studio. The tape rolls, and everyone leaves well pleased. But then something happens, and the song doesn’t quite fit the project. These are fourteen songs, recorded between 1973 and 1983, that didn’t quite fit at the time. For many years, they were stored in the basent of Audie Ashworth’s house in Nashville. Ashworth was J. J. Cale’s producer and music publisher, and the basent was Crazy Mama’s Studio, known to those who examine the back of LP covers as the site of some of Cale’s finest recordings. In common with all of Cale’s recordings, these were painstakingly crafted with a profound understanding of how recordings are made. His touch of genius was to apply technology and craftsmanship to the point that they became invisible. Anyone can be clever; simplicity is tough.

A little background. In 1964, John Cale moved from Tulsa to Los Angeles. Hometown buddy Leon Russell was already there.  “Through Leon, I met a guy named Snuff Garrett,” says Cale. “Leon was an arranger for Snuff, and I worked as an engineer for him. I’d do Pat Boone, Lesley Gore sessions, and then I got tired of that and figured I’d go to Nashville. I asked Snuff if he knew anyone in Nashville, and he said, ‘Yeah. Hubert Long.’ So I drove to Nashville, figured I’d get some work playing guitar or something. Met Hubert, and, at that time, Audie Ashworth handled Hubert’s publishing. Told them I’d do anything. ‘Hey, man, I’ll play guitar for you, be your engineer.’ When you’re poor, that’s how it is.

“Before that, Snuff had produced a record on me, ‘After Midnight,’ and nothing much happened until Eric Clapton cut it. I was back in Tulsa then. Almost outta music. Audie called me. ‘You oughta come back to Nashville and make an album.’ So I did. Audie shopped the record around and wouldn’t nobody take it until he pitched it to Shelter Records.  I liked Audie. He didn’t bother me. I didn’t have to talk to nobody.  He had a beautiful way of telling you he didn’t like something in a way that didn’t hurt your ego. Like, I did ‘Cocaine’ in a jazzy style and he said, ‘Naw, that ain’t gonna work.’ So I made it rock ‘n’ roll. That was Audie.”

J. J. Cale’s records made their way to those who needed to hear th: a worldwide fellowship of fans together with some big name acts who covered a song now and again. There were just enough fans for the records to pay for thselves and just enough big name acts, like Eric Clapton, Santana, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, for J. J. Cale and Audie Ashworth to live pretty well. Audie wanted Cale to take it to the next level, but Cale resisted, and Audie respected that decision. “Audie wanted me to wear a five thousand dollar rhinestone suit and look like Porter Wagoner and he wanted my photo on the records. I tried to tell him I wanted to be part of the show; I didn’t want to be the show. I didn’t want to be famous.  I’ve been around some very famous people, but they’re uncomfortable soon as they leave the house. Now a lot of people thrive on that. ‘Look at me, look at me, look at me.’ But I’m not like that. I told Audie, ‘If people don’t know how I look, I can go get a sandwich at Denny’s.’ He kinda got it, I think.” Every year or so, Shelter Records leaned on Ashworth who in turn leaned on Cale. “He’d say, ‘John, we need a new album.’ I’d say, ‘What was wrong with the last one?’ He’d hire the musicians and the studio. I’d sing some songs for the musicians, and we’d figure what worked and what didn’t.”

J. J. Cale had been dissecting records since the early Fifties and used that knowledge to create his signature sound. “When I came up,” he says, “I was listening to Les Paul and he was the one who started manipulating sound. Ninety-five percent of my records is me manipulating the sound. People like that natural sound but a lot of that is me manipulating it to make it sound like a back porch record. There’s a bunch of technology that’s been made to sound kinda funky, natural.”

In 1975, J. J. Cale and Audie Ashworth built Crazy Mama’s studio, named for the only Top 30 hit Cale scored under his own name. Cale was living on Old Hickory Lake near Nashville at the time, and built a parallel universe with the same technology at the lake house. That way, he could take the tapes home and work on th some more. But even with his own studio, Cale would still record at Nashville’s full-line studios. “We recorded mostly my own stuff at Crazy Mama’s, and those cover songs were done at what Audie and me called uptown sessions,” says Cale. Some of the best-known session players of the day were called in, and all of th rose to the challenge of helping Cale craft his minimalist pieces. They would overcut for every LP, and these recordings were among those sidelined for one reason or another.  If there’s a surprise, it’s the number of cover versions. “Generally,” says Cale, “I never did other peoples’ songs ‘cause I can’t really sing too good so I just stuck to my own little bluesy thing. I like other people’s songs, and it’s not that I don’t like my own songs, it’s just that I’ve become predictable to myself.” A few albums had non-original songs, but only a few.

“I became friends with Waylon Jennings. We weren’t cronies, but we were a mutual admiration society, and I always liked that ‘Waymore’s Blues.’ We’d record maybe two weeks in a row and do maybe thirty songs, and sometimes I’d just sneak a song like that in there. Always liked Randy Newman, too, and ‘Rollin’’ was my favorite song of his. I didn’t get out of my bag with that one. Leon Russell’s song, ‘My Cricket,’ was almost like a do when he done it, so we made a bigger-sounding record out of it.” “Golden Ring” is an Eric Clapton song, and a previously unknown chapter in the Cale/Clapton story. But when it came down to deciding which songs to include or exclude, Audie Ashworth worked on the prise that he was trying to establish J. J. Cale as a songwriter and an artist, and so it made sense to keep the focus on original songs.

J. J. Cale eventually returned to California, and Audie moved Crazy Mama’s across town to an old lodge on ten acres that he’d owned since the late 1970s. The studio was equipped with the console on which George Harrison had recorded much of All Things Must Pass and another formerly used by Herbie Hancock. Cale was to record his next studio album there and there were plans to release a live album, as well as this collection of previously unreleased recordings. But sadly, Audie passed away suddenly  in August 2000. Other projects intervened, but now Audie’s wife, Bonnie, feels that the time is right for these recordings to see light-of-day. “It is,” said Cale, “kinda like someone showing you a bunch of old photographs from thirty-five years ago.”

COLIN ESCOTT

Interview with Cale by John Sutton Smith.