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Saturday, 27 July 2013

J.J. Cale, Musician and Songwriter, Dies at 74

J. J. Cale, a musician and songwriter whose blues-inflected rock influenced some of the genre’s biggest names and whose songs were recorded by Eric Clapton and Johnny Cash among others, died on Friday in La Jolla, Calif. He was 74.

J. J. Cale died on Friday in La Jolla, Calif. Mr. Cale was
best known as the
writer of "Cocaine" and "After Midnight,"
songs made famous by his collaborator, Eric Clapton.

Mr. Cale suffered a heart attack and died at Scripps Memorial Hospital around 8 p.m. on Friday evening, a statement posted on his Web site said.

He is best known as the writer of “Cocaine” and “After Midnight,” songs made famous when they were recorded by his collaborator, Eric Clapton.

A multi-instrumentalist, Mr. Cale often played all of the parts on his albums, also recording and mixing them himself. He is also credited as one of the architects of the 1970s Tulsa sound, a blend of rockabilly, blues, country and rock that came to influence Neil Young and Bryan Ferry, among others. He won a Grammy Award in 2007 for an album with Mr. Clapton.

“Basically, I’m just a guitar player that figured out I wasn’t ever gonna be able to buy dinner with my guitar playing,” Mr. Cale told an interviewer for his official biography. “So I got into songwriting, which is a little more profitable business.”

John Weldon Cale was born in Oklahoma in 1938. He recorded “After Midnight” in the mid-1960s, according to the biography, but had retreated to his native Tulsa and “given up on the business part of the record business” by the time Mr. Clapton covered it in 1970. He heard it on the radio that year, he told NPR, “and I went, ‘Oh, boy, I’m a songwriter now. I’m not an engineer or an elevator operator.' ”

Mr. Cale released an album, “Naturally,” in 1972, to capitalize on that success, and continued to tour and release new music until 2009. But he declined to put his image on any of his covers and kept his vocals low amid the instruments on his recordings. He developed a reputation as a private figure and a musician’s musician while his songs were covered by Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Band, Deep Purple and Tom Petty, among others.

“I’d like to have the fortune,” he said in his biography, “but I don’t care too much about the fame.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 27, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the first name of one of the musicians who was influenced by the Tulsa sound. He is Bryan Ferry, not Brian.

Official biography