Sinuous rhythms, conversational singing, and, most of all, intricate, bluesy guitar playing characterize Cale's performances of his own songs. This compilation, covering 11 years of recording, includes the songs Eric Clapton, who borrowed heavily from Cale's style in his 1970s solo work, made famous: "After Midnight" and "Cocaine."
The Road to Escondido is an album by J. J. Cale and Eric Clapton. It was released on November 7, 2006. Contained on this album are the final recordings of Billy Preston, to whom the album is dedicated.
In 2004, Eric Clapton held a three day festival in Dallas, Texas. It was called The Crossroads Guitar Festival, and featured J.J. Cale. This gave Clapton the opportunity to ask Cale to produce an album for him. The two started working together and eventually decided to record an album. A number of high profile musicians also agreed to work on the album, including Billy Preston, Pino Palladino, Derek Trucks, Taj Mahal, John Mayer, and Doyle Bramhall II.
Escondido is a city near Cale’s hometown of Valley Center, California. Though it is named Escondido, the album title actually references Valley Center.
The album won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album in 2008. -From Wikipedia
On March 15, 2007, Eric Clapton's world tour stopped at San Diego's iPayOne Center (originally the San Diego Sports Arena and now the Valley View Casino Center). The band lineup for the tour continues to be a firm fan-favorite, with Derek Trucks and Doyle Bramhall II on guitars, Chris Stainton and Tim Carmon on keyboards, Willie Weeks on bass, Steve Jordan on drums and backing vocalists Michelle John and Sharon White During the set…
In May 1965, Lou Reed was a 23-year-old staff songwriter and session musician for Pickwick Records in New York, churning out doo-wop and rock ’n’ roll “soundalike” singles to be sold in drugstores. There he was introduced to his future Velvet Underground bandmate, the Welsh-born John Cale, when the label put the two of them together for a house band called The Primitives. (They would go on to make the jokey novelty song “The Ostrich.”) Reed could write teen pop hits at a rapid clip, but his real creative focus essentially starts with this foundational document, Words & Music, May 1965, which he made with Cale and which includes the first known recordings of some of the Velvets’ most well-known songs. There’s almost nothing thematically linking his former dime-store hits-for-hire and these strands of The Velvet Underground’s underbelly-surveying DNA. But the collection (the first in a series of archival releases) does highlight the songwriting discipline and rigor that would see Reed through countless stylistic changes and a 50-plus-year career as one of America’s most important artists.