J. J. Cale - Rare Live Tracks (1971-1994)

The fact that I'm posting this J. J. Cale album is entirely due to my musical friend MZ. He came up with the idea for this album and presented me a bunch of songs for it (just as he did for the collection of Cale's studio rarities, called "Rare Studio Tracks," and also for the one of his early years). I then did a deep dive and found some more songs, but most of the heavy lifting here is from MZ. So thanks for that. :)

Between this album and the other two I just mentioned, one can see that Cale left a lot of songs by the wayside. But I'd argue that most of these are as good as the ones he put on his albums, because when it comes to Cale the groove is the main thing. 

For the "Rare Studio Tracks" album, almost everything on it was officially released, just obscure. But for this album, everything is unreleased, unless you count four songs that have only appeared on a DVD. Also, the vast majority of the songs on "Rare Studio Tracks" were originals. But it seems in concert he liked to do cover versions sometimes, because I'd guess that about half of the songs are covers. You may recognize some of them, like "Hit the Road Jack" and "Johnny B. Goode" (although you have to listen for that latter one, because it's an instrumental only version).

The sound quality is very good to excellent throughout. MZ and I generally limited ourselves to soundboard bootlegs as sources. There are a few cases where the same song was done for two different bootlegged concerts. In those cases I only used one version. However, for the song "Hands Off Her," I've included a version from 1971 and another from 1979, because they're significantly different from each other.

The songs are in chronological order. If you look at the mp3 tags, you'll see that the vast majority come from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. I'm not sure why that is, since he was musically active until close to his death in 2013, but this is what we found.

This album is an hour and five minutes long.

01 Hands Off Her [1971 Version] (J. J. Cale)
02 No Sweat [Instrumental] (J. J. Cale)
03 Ten Easy Lessons (J. J. Cale)
04 Backwards [Instrumental] (J. J. Cale)
05 Hands Off Her [1979 Version] (J. J. Cale)
06 I Believe to My Soul (J. J. Cale)
07 Same Old Feeling (J. J. Cale)
08 Wish I Had Me a Dollar (J. J. Cale)
09 Bad Luck and Trouble (J. J. Cale)
10 Hit the Road Jack (J. J. Cale)
11 Love for Sale (J. J. Cale)
12 Blond-Headed Woman (J. J. Cale)
13 Got Myself a Woman (J. J. Cale)
14 Johnny B. Goode [Instrumental Version] (J. J. Cale)
15 Unnamed Instrumental (J. J. Cale)
16 Walking to Kansas City (J. J. Cale)
17 Louisiana Women (J. J. Cale)
18 T-Bone Shuffle [Instrumental] (J. J. Cale)

https://www.imagenetz.de/iDwcm

The cover photo was taken at a concert in London in 1977.