Who recorded it first
Call Me the Breeze
Not a Lynyrd Skynyrd original — J. J. Cale wrote it and cut it first, in 1970
The boogie-piano version everyone knows belongs to Lynyrd Skynyrd, who closed Second Helping with it in 1974, and the assumption that the song is theirs follows naturally from that. It isn’t. J. J. Cale wrote “Call Me the Breeze” and recorded it himself in 1970 — alone, over a drum machine he used because he could not afford a drummer — and it opened his debut album Naturally, released on 25 October 1971 by Shelter in the US and A&M in the UK. Cale’s recording was never a single and never charted; it spread purely on radio play, as what his encyclopedia entry calls a turntable hit.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released An album track, not a single. It opens side one of Naturally, J. J. Cale’s debut, released on 25 October 1971 — Shelter Records in the US (SW-8908), A&M in the UK (AMLS 68105) — produced by Audie Ashworth. Cale cut the track in 1970, playing to a primitive drum machine, with Carl Radle added on bass; Ashworth only hired a studio band afterwards, for the album’s other eight songs. The master runs 2:37.
Charted Did not chart. Cale’s recording was never issued as a single — the 45s drawn from Naturally were “Magnolia” (whose B-side “Crazy Mama” reached No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 after a Little Rock DJ flipped it) and a re-cut “After Midnight” (No. 42). “Call Me the Breeze” spread purely as radio play, a turntable hit with no chart entry of its own.
Hear J. J. Cale’s 1971 original from Naturally — 2:37, drum machine and all www.youtube.com · Auto-generated upload on the “J.J. Cale - Topic” channel, carrying the “Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group” credit and the album Naturally. The watch page was read directly: it runs 157 seconds, matching the MusicBrainz entry for the original recording (2:36.9) and the 2:37 master length, which confirms it is the 1971 take and not a later re-recording. Then compare Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1974 studio recording closing Second Helping — the boogie rebuild of J. J. Cale’s shuffle. www.youtube.com · LynyrdSkynyrdVEVO, the official VEVO channel, posted as “Call Me The Breeze (Audio)”. Runtime 311s = 5:11 against MusicBrainz’s 5:09 for the Second Helping studio master (the same recording licensed to the El Camino soundtrack) — 2s over. Deliberately avoided the many live entries MusicBrainz lists for this title (5:27 One More From the Road, 7:05 Winterland 1975, 6:17 Vicious Cycle Tour, 12:31 and 15:31 concert jams), none of which is the album cut.The paper trail
Cale explained the recording himself in 2004: he cut “Crazy Mama” and “Call Me The Breeze” to a drum machine because he had no money for a drummer, and only then did Audie Ashworth hire musicians and a real studio for the rest of the album — the account is quoted in full on the entry for Naturally ↗.
The Skynyrd side is documented just as plainly: Second Helping ↗ lists “Call Me the Breeze” as the closing track at 5:09, writer J. J. Cale, and names only “Don’t Ask Me No Questions” and “Sweet Home Alabama” as the album’s singles.
The catalogue databases agree. MusicBrainz’s entry for the original recording ↗ ties the 2:37 master to the 1971 US Shelter pressing and the 1972 UK A&M pressing, and nothing among the 131 recordings of the work predates it.
One tidy loose end: Cale’s own discography ↗ now files Naturally under Mercury (830 042) while noting it was originally a Shelter release — which is why some databases show a Mercury label on a 1971 record.
Wikipedia: “Call Me the Breeze” — the Cale original and the versions that followedKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
Setting the record straight
Nobody hid anything. Every Lynyrd Skynyrd pressing credits J. J. Cale as the writer, and the band spoke warmly about him. The confusion is a matter of volume: the version that gets played is so much bigger than the one that came first that listeners assume it is the source.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Recorded January 1974, released 15 April 1974 as the closing track of Second Helping on Sounds of the South / MCA. Never issued as a single, but a permanent fixture of the band’s live set.
J. J. Cale
Cut in 1970 with a drum machine and Carl Radle on bass; released 25 October 1971 as the opening track of Naturally on Shelter (US) and A&M (UK). No earlier recording of the song appears in the catalogue databases.
J. J. Cale
Unusually for a case like this, the songwriter and the first recording artist are the same man — so the correction returns the whole song to one person, not two.
Eric Clapton
Clapton’s 2014 tribute album The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale carried the track as “They Call Me the Breeze”, which is why the title turns up in two forms in streaming catalogues.
J. J. Cale wrote it and recorded it first, in 1970, for a debut album released in 1971. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1974 recording is a cover — and was credited to Cale from the start.
Context
Why the cover became the original
The two records are almost opposites, and that is the whole story. Cale’s runs 2:37, built on a 12-bar shuffle over a drum machine so primitive that listeners in 1971 did not recognise it as a machine at all; he later said tracks like it sounded almost like demos, because in practical terms they were. Skynyrd’s runs 5:09, with Billy Powell’s piano turned loose and a three-man horn section behind it. When a song exists in a quiet version and a loud one, the loud one wins the memory.
The commercial arithmetic sealed it. Cale’s recording was never a single and never charted — it worked as radio play and word of mouth. Skynyrd’s was not a single either, but it arrived on an album that reached No. 12 on the Billboard 200 and was certified double platinum, and it closed that album: the spot a band gives the song it wants you to leave humming. Then it stayed in the live set for decades. Nothing in Cale’s career was ever going to compete with that kind of repetition, and he seemed content that it did not — he had already watched Clapton turn “After Midnight” into someone else’s signature, and he took the royalty cheques over the spotlight every time.
The full chronology
- 1966 — Cale releases the single “Slow Motion” on Liberty Records. Its B-side, “After Midnight”, goes unnoticed until Eric Clapton records it in 1970 and makes Cale, in his thirties and broke, a viable recording artist.
- 1970 — Cale cuts “Call Me the Breeze” and “Crazy Mama” himself, using an electric drum machine because he has no money for a drummer. Carl Radle plays bass. Producer Audie Ashworth then hires a studio and a band for the album’s remaining eight songs.
- 29 September 1970 to 9 June 1971 — the Naturally sessions run at Bradley’s Barn in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, and Moss Rose in Nashville.
- 25 October 1971 — Naturally is released, on Shelter in the US and A&M in the UK. “Call Me the Breeze” opens side one at 2:37. It is not a single and it does not chart.
- January 1974 — Lynyrd Skynyrd record their version at the Record Plant in Los Angeles with producer Al Kooper, adding horns from Bobby Keys, Trevor Lawrence and Steve Madaio.
- 15 April 1974 — Second Helping is released on Sounds of the South / MCA with “Call Me the Breeze” as the closing track, 5:09. The album peaks at No. 12 on the Billboard 200, is certified gold that September and double platinum in 1987. The song is never released as a single.
- 13 September 1976 — a 5:27 live version, taped that July at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, appears on One More from the Road, fixing the arrangement in the public ear for good.
- 2014 — a year after Cale’s death, Eric Clapton records it for The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale, keeping the drum machine audible at the top of the track and retitling it “They Call Me the Breeze”.
- Since then — the Naturally catalogue has passed to Mercury/Universal, which is why Cale’s own discography files the 1971 album under Mercury (830 042) while noting it was originally a Shelter release.
The credit was never hidden. The sleeve said J. J. Cale all along.