In 1970 Yardbirds/Cream/Blind Faith guitar god Eric Clapton chose J.J. Cale’s “After Midnight” to launch his solo career. Ever since, Clapton has emulated Cale’s easy going, loping blues guitar and whispery vocal style to the point that their first album together, “The Road to Escondido” sounds like they’ve been playing with each other all their lives. Their styles are so interconnected that’s it hard to tell them apart as they trade off vocals and guitar riffs.  

Clapton and Cale, both now over sixty years old, get notable help (not that they need it) from some young bucks like John Mayer and Derek Trucks and some other old coots; Albert Lee (of Emmylou Harris’s band), Taj Mahal and Billy Preston in one of his last recorded performances. What results is a seamless blend of laid back country blues shuffles. Cale wrote most of the songs, rewriting his own classic “Call Me the Breeze” into an anti-war lament called “When This War is Over” and adding to his catalogue of standards with “Anyway the Wind Blows” and “It’s Easy.” Some of Clapton’s best blues work is recalled on the Brownie McGhee song “This Sporting Life” and his collaboration with Mayer on “Hard to Thrill” and the lyrics to both seem to tell his life story.   

Clapton’s fierce, fiery guitar work is long in his past but he says that one of his last ambitions was “to work with the man who's music has inspired me for as long as I can remember, there are not enough words for me to describe what he represents to me, musically and personally …he is a truly humble man.”  Cale’s influence is welcome if only to get Clapton to ignore his pop leaning tendencies and get back to the blues steeped music that has always been his strongest suit.  

Listen for a lot of music this week from J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton’s  “The Road to Escondido” on Paul Shugrue’s new music show “Out of the Box” Monday through Thursday from 7pm to 9pm and Saturdays from 1pm to 5pm.