“Call Me The Breeze” is the appropriate opener for Eric Clapton & Friends’ The Breeze: An Appreciation Of JJ Cale. It’s pure MOR Clapton with a clear-as-a-bell-vocal and quick guitar noodling on a song famously covered by Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1974. Covering to more than slight acclaim “After Midnight” and “Cocaine,” Clapton never failed to name drop Cale when he could, and even recorded The Road to Escondido in 2006 with the man. Here, Clapton decided to pay tribute to JJ Cale in a star-studded disc a year after the songwriter’s death in 2013 at the age of 74.
The Clapton and Tom Petty collaboration on “Rock and Roll Records” is a solid contender but there are better contributions from the two elsewhere on this set. “Someday” is informed by laid back conga playing, way-back in-the-mix harmonica, and Mark Knopfler’s distinctive guitar pull ups and vocal. There is a lilting piano in the mix that fills out a stand-out track of the 16. The big chunk of “Lies” is just infectious, as is John Mayer’s clean playing – his voice ain’t so bad either! This is big-time commercial hit territory with the full range of backing female vocals in the chorus and Mayer’s sweet leading. Mayer offers another stellar cover on the sexy love song “Magnolia.” This is Mayer at his best with soft backing vocals and guitar accents placed perfectly behind it.
The second of the Petty duets is “I Got The Same Old Blues” with a funky organ drive, Clapton playing a distorted lead close to his chest, and Petty singing in a voice you won’t recognize. Things get all open and acoustic with Willie Nelson and his buzzy old guitar cutting through on “Songbird.” The problem with this mix of Clapton’s electric and Willie’s acoustic is that the song itself isn’t one of Cale’s stronger ones. Nelson sounds great though on “Starbound” with Derek Trucks. It’s a better song overall, allowing Nelson’s warble to almost break on the vocal. The single note soft slices of layers of guitar behind him make this tune so memorable.
“I’ll Be There” is a Don White tour de force, a real country mover with slide from Clapton. It moves about as quick as the snare drum driver “Train to Nowhere,” the second tune featuring Knopfler. Don White lends his considerable vocals talents to the choruses to produce yet another radio-friendly work-out of one of the stronger cuts on the record. For the most part Clapton picks well from Cale’s collection of tunes and seems to have put the right players and singers on the right remakes. On the whole, The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale is a heartfelt tribute to a great talent.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
