JJ Cale - Ebbets Field 1975

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Fine live performances from JJ Cale

This is a very good record of JJ Cale playing live in 1975, plus three very early singles and their B-sides. It's a fine live album and a great indication of how great a songwriter and guitarist JJ was.

This recording was made not long after Okie was issued. That remains a truly great album but sadly the recording of the show has only partially survived and we don't get any songs from Okie at all. However, the nine live tracks we do get are crackers, all excellently performed. JJ is on fine form and his band is terrific, sympathetic and tight. The vocals are good, although there's the odd cracked note and JJ's guitar wanders slightly out of tune a little on occasion, too. Personally, I think that's just fine: it's a live performance and that can happen to anyone playing live. It doesn't spoil the music at all and gives it a genuineness which I like a lot. It's a fine set.

The sound is very good on the whole. The music comes over very well, and so does the atmosphere in the small venue. There are the usual loud whoops from some very persistent souls in the audience (even in the most sensitive and delicate passages of Magnolia, for heavens' sake) but it's not too intrusive.

The final six tracks are three singles and their B-sides put out by JJ as Johnny Cale in 1958, 1960 and 1961 respectively. They are...er...interesting period pieces, shall we say, some of which seem to be taken from slightly scratchy 45s rather than master tapes. There's nothing wrong with any of them, but they're pretty undistinguished, generic stuff as JJ was finding his musical feet. Shock Hop, amazingly, is an instrumental which sounds like a slightly dull Shadows track with the odd Monster-Mash-like comic/scary laugh superimposed, and the others are pretty ordinary blues-based songs. I'm very glad to have them as a historical record (I had no idea they even existed) but I won't be taking them out and playing them much, I'm afraid.

In summary, this is a very good live performance by JJ Cale which any fan like me will want and will enjoy. The juvenilia isn't up to much, but so what? The meat of this is nine tracks of the Great Man performing really well, and it's warmly recommended.