Thom Owens, All Music Guide

J.J. Cale's debut album, Naturally, was recorded after Eric Clapton made "After Midnight" a huge success. Instead of following Slowhand's cue and constructing a slick blues-rock album, Cale recruited a number of his Oklahoma friends and made a laid-back country-rock record that firmly established his distinctive, relaxed style. Cale included a new version of "After Midnight" on the album, but the true meat of the record lay in songs like "Crazy Mama," which became a hit single, and "Call Me the Breeze," which Lynyrd Skynyrd later covered. On these songs and many others on Naturally, Cale effortlessly captured a lazy, rolling boogie that contradicted all the commercial styles of boogie, blues and country rock at the time. Where his contemporaries concentrated on solos, Cale worked the song and its rhythm, and the result was a pleasant, engaging album that was in no danger of raising anybody's temperature.

Personnel: J.J. Cale (vocals, guitar); Mac Grayden (slide guitar); Weldon Myrick (steel guitar); Buddy Spiker, Shorty Lavender (fiddle); Walter Haynes (dobro); Ed Colis (harmonica); David Briggs (piano, organ); Bob Wilson, Jerry Whitehurst (piano); Tim Drummond, Carl Radle, Norbert Putnam (bass); Karl Himmel, Chuck Browning (drums); Diane Davidson (background vocals). Engineers: James Long, Joe Mills, Jim Williamson. Recorded at Moss Rose Studio, Nashville, Tennessee on September 29-30, 1970 and at Bradley's Barn in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee on October 2-4, 1970 and June 9, 1971.

NATURALLY has stood up over the years as a perfect debut. When released in 1971, it introduced J.J. Cale fully. In the decades since, this album, along with its follow-up, REALLY, have remained perfect entry points into Cale's laid-back grooves. His music is deceptively tricky--the surface textures pull you in like a restful chair, but the interlocking rhythmic base is full of subtle tugs and pulls that are far from standard-issue slow boogie. Cale's songs have also proven to have the breadth to be covered by others, and this album includes the first appearances of both his "Call Me the Breeze" and "After Midnight" (a hit for Eric Clapton). A sterling cast of players (including Buddy Spicher, Carl Radle, David Briggs, Norbert Putnam, and Tim Drummond) backs Cale. NATURALLY is a perfect introduction to J.J. Cale's work.

Jon Landau, RollingStone Magazine, issue 103

This quiet and leisurely album from an excellent guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter is a charmer. J.J. Cale has a unique approach to funk, blues, and country and all it involves is taking things at just as relaxed and mellow a pace as the human metabolism will allow. Here it results in one of the most enjoyable debut albums heard in some time.

Cale is currently hitting the AM charts with a very unlikely number, "Crazy Mama," a typical Cale blues, done with a small rhythm section and his own incredibly controlled lead guitar playing. Its tempo is so unusually calm it is the last thing you would expect to hear blasting over your local Bill Drake outlet.

The same contrast in pace is evident in the difference between Eric Clapton's version of "After Midnight" and the one done here by the song's author. Cale doesn't so much slow it down as ease it up. With the bass carrying the modest band arrangement via an intricately repeated line, Cale lets the guitar, voice, and song speak for themselves while the production provides just enough color to keep the song moving. It is a perfect blend for the number and results in one of the album's highlights.

Part of Cale's talent consists in his ability to unify disparate elements. Even when he uses horns on "Nowhere to Run" or "Bringing It Back" the album suffers from no interruption in mood, as this additional element is perfectly blended with the more skeleton framework heard on the rest of the cuts. Likewise his ability to unify tempos, for no matter what real pace he takes a song at, it comes out sounding like nothing more than an extension of basic J.J. Cale time, which is heard from the record's beginning to end.

Cale's lyrics are appropriately simple but always effective. Many of his songs deal with missing women and the resulting problems; others with feeling bad for no explicit reason. Possibly the album's best cut, and its simplest, is of the latter type. "Crying Eyes" contains all the musical virtues of Cale's style as well as its most emotional, personal and affecting statement of them.

The only problem with this album is that Cale is not yet strong enough to pull off his goal, which was to produce a record completely unified in mood and sound. Occasionally the continuity he achieves leads to a feeling of sameness and then boredom. Which is only to say that the excellence of this album rests more in its individual highpoints than in the record as a complete entity. That accomplishment lies ahead of J.J. Cale but there is every reason to think he'll get it next time around.
 

© Frank Steven Groen