Jimmie Tramel
Tulsa World Scene Reporter
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Tulsa Sound music artist JJ Cale will be posthumously inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
“We are thrilled to have JJ Cale join this year’s class,” Rich Hallworth, chair of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, said in a news release.
“With classics such as “After Midnight,” “Cocaine” and “Call Me The Breeze,” JJ’s work as both a songwriter and an artist will be remembered always. He is richly deserving of our ultimate recognition.”
Cale, who was born in Tulsa in 1938 and was educated at Central High School, died in 2013. His route to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame came via a “Legacy” category, designed specifically to honor hall of fame-worthy candidates who are deceased.
Other members of the class of 2025 are Steve Bogard, Don Cook, Emmylou Harris, Jim Lauderdale, Tony Martin and Brad Paisley. Inductions will take place Monday, Oct. 6 during the 55th Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Gala at the Music City Center. The seven new electees will join 247 existing members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, which was established in 1970.
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The organization provided this Cale bio:
Famed for his bluesy, rootsy, laid-back style, Oklahoma native John Weldon Cale moved to Nashville in 1959 and found work as a guitarist with touring Grand Ole Opry troupes.
After stints in Los Angeles and Tulsa, Cale returned to Music City in 1970 to record his debut album.
In 1972, he built his own studio in Nashville, where he continued to record and live part-time throughout the ’70s and early ’80s.
Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler have acknowledged JJ’s influence as a guitarist, with the former making international hits of Cale’s “After Midnight” and “Cocaine.”
Over the years Cale’s various albums have yielded “Crazy Mama” (a pop hit for him in 1972), “Call Me The Breeze” (turned into a rock standard by Lynyrd Skynyrd), “Clyde” (a top 10 country hit for Waylon Jennings in 1980), “Any Way The Wind Blows” (Brother Phelps in 1995) and “The Sensitive Kind” (Santana in 1981), as well as the oft-covered “I Got The Same Old Blues,” “Magnolia,” and “Travelin’ Light.”
Cale released 16 albums, including a Grammy-winning collaboration with Clapton, “The Road to Escondido” in 2006. In 2014, after Cale’s death, Clapton released the tribute album “The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale.”
jimmie.tramel@tulsaworld.com
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Jimmie Tramel
Tulsa World Scene Reporter
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