Song of the Day 1/22: J.J. Cale, “After Midnight”

Thanks to Moscow Mitch McConnell, anyone who wants to watch the Senate trial of the Marmalade Menace will have to stay up after midnight. I think J.J. Cale summed up this strategy in the lyrics:

Gonna cause talk and suspicion
We gonna give an exhibition
We gonna find out what it is all about

Guitarist and songwriter J.J. Cale moved to Los Angeles from Tulsa in the early ’60s, working mostly as a recording engineer while writing songs. In 1966 he cut a demo of “After Midnight” that didn’t sell but made the rounds among musicians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo3Jj94afSY

One musician who heard it was Delaney Bramlett, who played it for Eric Clapton, who was fascinated with Cale’s guitar playing on the track. Clapton recorded it for his first solo album in 1970; released as the album’s only single, it reached #18 on the Hot 100.

By then Cale had given up on LA and moved back to Tulsa. He only knew Clapton recorded the song when he heard it on his car radio. “I was dirt poor, not making enough to eat and I wasn’t a young man. I was in my thirties, so I was very happy. It was nice to make some money.”

The song’s success also brought him a recording contract. For his first album, “Naturally,” he re-recorded “After Midnight” in a slower, slinkier style. This version reached #42 on the charts.

Clapton became a fanboy of Cale’s songs, recording several, most famously “Cocaine.” In 1988 recorded another rearrangement of “After Midnight,” a version that reached #4 on the Mainstream Rock chart and was used in a beer commercial.

Clapton even recorded an album with Cale, “The Road to Escondido,” which won a Grammy in 2008 as best contemporary blues album. Cale died, age 74, of a heart attack in 2013.