Who recorded it first

Cocaine

Not an Eric Clapton original — J. J. Cale wrote it and cut it first, in 1976

“Cocaine” sits in most people’s heads under Eric Clapton, and a good number of them file it under Clapton as its author too. Neither is right. J. J. Cale wrote the song and recorded it himself, sixth on the running order of his fourth album Troubadour, released in September 1976 on Shelter Records and produced by Audie Ashworth. Clapton cut his own version for Slowhand in 1977, and that is the one radio kept.

The record

Who recorded it first

Record
“Cocaine” — J. J. Cale
First release
Troubadour, Shelter Records, September 1976
Written by
J. J. Cale
Produced by
Audie Ashworth

Released An album track first: song six on Troubadour, J. J. Cale’s fourth studio album, released September 1976 on Shelter Records and produced by Audie Ashworth. It runs 2:48. Shelter lifted “Travelin’ Light” as the album’s first single, and put “Cocaine” out on a 45 in 1977 paired with “Hey Baby.”

Charted Yes — and better than the “lost original” framing suggests. Cale’s recording was the No. 1 single in New Zealand for the week of 6 March 1977 and the seventh-best-selling single there that year. It also reached No. 2 in Switzerland, No. 5 in Austria, No. 10 in Sweden, No. 22 in Germany and No. 45 in Australia on the Kent Music Report. No US chart placing is recorded.

Hear J. J. Cale’s original 1976 recording of “Cocaine” from Troubadour — the shuffling Tulsa version, not Clapton’s. www.youtube.com · An auto-generated upload on the “J.J. Cale - Topic” channel, whose description reads “Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group,” names the album as Troubadour, credits Audie Ashworth as producer and carries a ℗ 1976 Universal International Music B.V. line. It runs 2:49, matching the MusicBrainz timing for the Troubadour track (Wikipedia rounds it to 2:48), which confirms it is the original cut rather than a later re-recording. Then compare Eric Clapton’s 1977 studio cut from Slowhand — the swaggering, radio-owning version that pushed J. J. Cale’s original out of most people’s memory. www.youtube.com · Auto-generated upload on the “Eric Clapton - Topic” channel; description reads “Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group · Cocaine · Eric Clapton · Slowhand 35th Anniversary · ℗ 1977 Universal International Music B.V.”, producer Glyn Johns, composer J.J. Cale. Runtime 222s (3:42), an exact match to the MusicBrainz Slowhand recording at 222000ms. MusicBrainz also carries a 1977 Slowhand entry at 216640ms (3:36); the 6s spread is the usual fade/lead-in difference between pressings, and every live Clapton “Cocaine” in MusicBrainz runs 6:08 or longer, so this is unambiguously the studio master and not a concert re-cut.

How the 1976 original checks out

The song’s Wikipedia entry ↗ states plainly that “Cocaine” was written and recorded in 1976 by J. J. Cale and popularised afterwards by Eric Clapton’s 1977 Slowhand version.

The Troubadour album entry ↗ dates the record to September 1976 on Shelter Records, credits Audie Ashworth as producer, and carries Cale’s own account of writing the song as a jazz swing before re-cutting it.

Wikipedia’s list of 1977 New Zealand No. 1 singles ↗ puts Cale’s “Cocaine” at the top for the week of 6 March 1977 — months before Clapton’s album appeared.

The MusicBrainz entry for the 1976 US Shelter pressing ↗ (catalogue SRL-52002) lists “Cocaine” as track six, and the several hundred recordings attached to the composition include no version by anyone earlier than Cale’s.

Wikipedia: Cocaine (song) — Cale’s original alongside Clapton’s cover
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Fact-check

Sorting out the credit

Three separate claims get folded into one whenever this song comes on. Here they are apart.

The beliefCover, 1977

Eric Clapton

Clapton’s version, on Slowhand, is so thoroughly his that the song is routinely listed among his own compositions. He has never encouraged that; he credits Cale openly, and this was already the second Cale song he had made famous.

The originalFirst recording, September 1976

J. J. Cale

Cale recorded it for Troubadour on Shelter Records, produced by Audie Ashworth. No recording of the song by anyone predates it.

The writerSole composer

J. J. Cale

Cale wrote it alone. Original artist and songwriter are the same person here, which is why there is no third name to untangle.

The wrinklePartly wrong

The “forgotten original” story

Cale’s record was not obscure everywhere — it was a No. 1 single in New Zealand and reached No. 2 in Switzerland. It simply never charted in the United States, which is where the amnesia set in.

Same song, same writer, two records — and the one that came first is the one nobody in America heard.

Context

Why Clapton’s version is the one you remember

The usual explanation — that Cale’s original sank without trace — is not quite true, and the true version is more interesting. Cale’s recording went to No. 1 in New Zealand in March 1977 and finished as that country’s seventh-best-selling single of the year; it reached No. 2 in Switzerland and the top five in Austria. What it never did was chart in the United States. So the record did not vanish everywhere. It vanished in the market whose radio programmers and record buyers went on to define what “classic rock” means, and that is the memory the rest of us inherited.

The other half of it is temperament. Clapton had a stadium-sized platform, a hit album on RSO, and a live set he would play for decades; “Cocaine” became a fixed point in it. Cale spent his career actively ducking that machinery — burying his vocal in the mix, declining promotion he found undignified, touring when it suited him and not when it didn’t. He had already watched this exact thing happen once, when Clapton’s 1970 “After Midnight” made a hit out of a Cale song that Cale himself could not give away. He was not robbed. He was, by design, quieter.

The full chronology
  • 1966–67 — Cale cuts a demo 45 of “After Midnight” for Liberty Records in Los Angeles and hands copies around to Tulsa friends working as session players.
  • 1970 — Clapton records “After Midnight” for his solo debut. Cale, back in Tulsa and broke, only finds out when he hears it on the radio.
  • 1976 — Cale writes “Cocaine” as a Mose Allison-flavoured cocktail-jazz swing. Producer Audie Ashworth tells him it wants to be more rock and roll and more commercial, so Cale re-cuts it in the form everyone now knows.
  • September 1976 — Troubadour, Cale’s fourth studio album, is released on Shelter Records with “Cocaine” as track six. The first single lifted from it is “Travelin’ Light.”
  • 6 March 1977 — Cale’s “Cocaine” is the No. 1 single in New Zealand. Shelter issues it as a 45, paired with “Hey Baby.”
  • 25 November 1977 — Clapton’s Slowhand is released on RSO, produced by Glyn Johns and recorded at Olympic Studios in London. His “Cocaine” goes out as the B-side of “Lay Down Sally,” which reaches No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
  • 1980 — A live Clapton “Cocaine” from Just One Night reaches the Hot 100 as the flip side of “Tulsa Time,” a No. 30 hit.
  • 2006 — Cale and Clapton record together for the first time on The Road to Escondido, which brings Cale his first Grammy.
Cale’s record was never buried. It just never got played in America.

The original recording artist — and the writer

J. J. Cale

Born John Weldon Cale · 5 December 1938, Oklahoma City · died 26 July 2013, San Diego

Cale grew up in Tulsa, learned sound engineering before he learned to make a living at music, and built the whole Tulsa-sound aesthetic out of that: shuffling grooves, early drum machines, unconventional mixes, and a vocal deliberately tucked down under the band. He had written “Cocaine” as a loose jazz swing in the manner of Mose Allison before producer Audie Ashworth pushed him toward a harder, more commercial arrangement, and Cale went back and re-cut it. He was famously uninterested in fame — he once turned down a television slot for his biggest US single rather than mime to a backing track — and lived instead on the royalties other people’s hit versions of his songs generated. In 2006 he and Clapton finally made a record together, The Road to Escondido, which won Cale his first Grammy.

Popularly credited as the original

Eric Clapton

Born 30 March 1945 · Ripley, Surrey, England

Clapton recorded “Cocaine” for Slowhand with producer Glyn Johns and his Tulsa-heavy touring band — Carl Radle on bass, Jamie Oldaker on drums, George Terry on rhythm guitar — which is precisely why his version swings the way Cale’s does. He has never claimed the song, and he has said more than once that Cale is one of the most important figures in rock; this was already the second Cale composition he had turned into a hit, after “After Midnight” in 1970. He reads the song as an anti-drug one, calling it “quite cleverly anti-cocaine” on the grounds that a lecture would never have landed. The error here is entirely chronological: his record is superb, it is just second.