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JJ Cale
Cale in 2006
Background information
Birth name	John Weldon Cale
Born	(1938-12-05) December 5, 1938 (age 73) Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.
Genres	Americana, Cajun, blues, swamp rock, Red Dirt, Tulsa Sound
Occupations	Musician, songwriter
Instruments	Guitar, vocals, piano, keyboards, bass, drums
Years active	1958–present
Labels	Shelter, Mercury, Polygram, Virgin, Rounder, Silvertone
Associated acts	Leathercoated Minds, Eric Clapton, Delaney & Bonnie, Leon Russell
Website	jjcale.com

JJ Cale (also J.J. Cale), born John Weldon Cale^[1] on December 5, 1938, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,^[1] is a Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter and musician. Cale is one of the originators of the Tulsa Sound, a loose genre drawing on blues, rockabilly, country, and jazz influences. Cale's personal style has often been described as "laid back".

His only U.S. hit single, Crazy Mama, peaked at #22 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1972. During the 2006 documentary film To Tulsa and Back Cale recounts the story of being offered the opportunity to appear on Dick Clark's American Bandstand to promote the song, which would have moved the song higher on the charts. Cale declined when told he could not bring his band to the taping and would be required to lip-sync the words to the song.

His songs have been performed by a number of other musicians including "After Midnight" and "Cocaine" by Eric Clapton,"Cajun Moon" by Randy Crawford, "Magnolia" by Jai, "Bringing It Back" by Kansas, "Call Me the Breeze" and "I Got the Same Old Blues" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Travelin' Light" and "Ride Me High" by Widespread Panic, "Tijuana" by Harry Manx, "Sensitive Kind" by Carlos Santana, "Cajun Moon" by Herbie Mann with Cissy Houston, and "Same Old Blues" by Captain Beefheart.

Biography[link]

Cale was born on December 5, 1938, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Some sources incorrectly give his real name as "Jean-Jacques Cale". A Sunset Strip nightclub owner employing Cale in the mid-1960s came up with the "JJ" moniker to avoid confusion with the Velvet Underground's John Cale.^{[citation needed]} In the 2006 documentary, To Tulsa and Back: On Tour with J.J. Cale, Rocky Frisco tells the same version of the story mentioning the other John Cale but without further detail.

Discography[link]

Singles[link]

• 1958 "Shock Hop/Sneaky" [45 - as Johnny Cale]^[2]
• 1960 "Troubles, Troubles/Purple Onion" [45 - as Johnny Cale Quintet] ^[2]
• 1961 "Ain't That Lovin You Baby/She's My Desire" [45 - as Johnny Cale Quintet] ^[2]
• 1971 "Crazy Mama" [45 as J.J. Cale], from the album Naturally, peaked at #22 on the US single charts on April 8, 1972.

[edit] Albums^[3]

• 1966 A Trip Down The Sunset Strip (with the Leathercoated Minds)
• 1972 Naturally
• 1973 Really
• 1974 Okie
• 1976 Troubadour
• 1979 5
• 1981 Shades
• 1982 Grasshopper
• 1983 #8
• 1984 Special Edition (a compilation of hits from previous albums)
• 1990 Travel Log
• 1992 Number 10
• 1994 Closer to You
• 1996 Guitar Man
• 1997 Anyway the Wind Blows: The Anthology
• 1998 The Very Best of J.J. Cale
• 2000 Universal Masters Collection
• 2001 Live
• 2004 To Tulsa and Back
• 2006 The Definitive Collection
• 2006 Collected (with bonus tracks) (Dutch release only)
• 2006 The Road to Escondido (with Eric Clapton)
• 2007 Rewind: The Unreleased Recordings
• 2009 Roll On
• 2011 The Silvertone Years (A collection chronicling JJ Cale's music released by Silvertone Records between 1989-1992)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: JJ Cale

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (February 2011)

• J.J. Cale Official website
• "To Tulsa and back - On Tour with J.J. Cale" Documentary about J.J. Cale
• VH1: Biography
• Laid Back – Thirty years under the influence of "Cocaine"
• JJ Cale Fan Network
• NPR: June 2004 story
• Rocky Frisco: Rocky Frisco Cale's Pianist
• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Cale, John Weldon
• On his Casio 360 guitar
• To Tulsa and back - On Tour With J.J. Cale

J. J. Abrams
Abrams at the Time 100 Gala in Manhattan, May 4, 2010
Born	Jeffrey Jacob Abrams (1966-06-27) June 27, 1966 (age 45) New York City, New York, U.S.
Residence	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Ethnicity	German, Jewish
Occupation	Film and television producer, director, screenwriter, actor and composer.
Years active	1990–present
Spouse	Katie McGrath
Children	3

Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams (born June 27, 1966) is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer.

He is well known for his work in the genres of action, drama, and science fiction. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity (1998–2002). He also created Alias (2001–2006) and co-created Lost (2004–2010), Fringe (2008–present), Undercovers (2010) and produced the television series Person of Interest (2011–present) and Alcatraz (2012). Abrams directed the films Mission: Impossible III (2006), Star Trek (2009), and Super 8 (2011), and produced the films Cloverfield (2008), Morning Glory (2010) and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011). Many of the films he directed/produced are by Paramount, while his television series were co-produced by either Warner Bros. or ABC Studios.

Early life[link]

Abrams was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles, where he attended Palisades Charter High School. He is the son of television producer Gerald W. Abrams and executive producer Carol Abrams. Abrams is Jewish,^[1] and attended Sarah Lawrence College.^[2]

Career[link]

Abrams's first job in the movie business started when he was 16 when he wrote music for Don Dohler's film Nightbeast. During his senior year at college, he teamed with Jill Mazursky to write a feature film treatment. Purchased by Touchstone Pictures, the treatment was the basis for Taking Care of Business, Abrams's first produced film, which starred Charles Grodin and Jim Belushi. He followed that up with Regarding Henry, starring Harrison Ford, and Forever Young, starring Mel Gibson.

Abrams collaborated with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay on the 1998 film, Armageddon. That same year, he made his first foray into television with Felicity, which ran for four seasons on The WB Network, serving as the show's co-creator (with Matt Reeves) and executive producer. He also composed its opening theme music.

Under his production company Bad Robot, which he founded with Bryan Burk in 2001,^[3] Abrams created and executive-produced ABC's Alias and is co-creator (along with Damon Lindelof and Jeffrey Lieber) and executive producer of Lost. He later co-wrote the teleplay for Lost's third season premiere "A Tale of Two Cities". As with Felicity, Abrams also composed the opening theme music for Alias and Lost.

In 2001, Abrams co-wrote and produced the thriller Joy Ride, and wrote an unproduced screenplay for a fifth Superman film in 2002.

In 2006, he served as executive producer of What About Brian and Six Degrees, also on ABC. Abrams directed and wrote the two-part pilot for Lost and remained active producer for the first half of the season. That same year he made his feature directorial debut in 2006 with Mission: Impossible III, starring Tom Cruise.

Abrams at the San Diego Comic-Con International in July 2010

Abrams spoke at the TED conference in 2007.^[4]

In 2008, Abrams produced the monster movie, Cloverfield.^[5] In 2009, he directed the science fiction film Star Trek,^[6] which he produced with Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof. While it was speculated that they would be writing and producing an adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series of novels, they publicly stated in November 2009 that they were no longer looking to take on that project.^[7]

In 2008, he co-created, executive produced, and co-wrote (along with Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) the FOX science-fiction series Fringe, for which he composed the theme music for as well.

Abrams is featured in the 2009 MTV Movie Awards 1980s-style digital short "Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions", with Andy Samberg and Will Ferrell, in which he plays a keyboard solo.

The NBC network picked up Abrams's Undercovers as its first new drama series for the 2010–11 season.^[8] However, it was subsequently cancelled by NBC in November 2010.

He wrote and directed the Paramount supernatural blockbuster Super 8, while co-producing with Steven Spielberg and Bryan Burk; it was released on June 10, 2011.^[9]

Abrams is currently directing the untitled sequel to Star Trek. The film is scheduled for release in May 2013.^[10]

Under development (due in 2013^[11]) is Abrams' film with Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot Productions, Mystery on Fifth Avenue. It is based on the New York Times article "Mystery on Fifth Avenue" about the renovation of an 8.5 million dollar co-op, a division of property originally owned by E.F. Hutton and Marjorie Merriweather Post. In 2008, it was widely reported Abrams purchased the rights to the Times article for six figures^[12], and enlisted comedy writers Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky to write the adaptation. According to the article, a wealthy couple Steven B. Klinsky and Maureen Sherry purchased the apartment in 2003 and live there with their four children. Soon after purchasing the apartment, they hired young architectural designer Eric Clough, who devised an elaborately clever "scavenger hunt" built into the apartment that involved dozens of historical figures, a fictional book and a soundtrack, woven throughout the apartment in puzzles, riddles, secret panels, compartments, and hidden codes, without the couple's knowledge. The family didn't discover the embedded mystery until months after moving into the apartment. ^[13][14] After Abrams purchased the article, Clough left him an encrypted message in the wall tiles of a Christian Louboutin shoe store he designed in West Hollywood.^[15]

Personal life[link]

Abrams is married to public relations exec Katie McGrath and has three children: sons August and Henry and daughter Gracie.^[2][16] He resides in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, United States.^[17][18]

Campaigns he has contributed to include those of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Bradley, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Bob Casey, Jr., Mark Udall, Harry Reid, Russ Feingold, Patrick J. Kennedy, and Tim Kaine. However, he has also donated $2,000 to the Republican Robert Vasquez.^[19]

Filmography[link]

Feature credits[link]

Television credits[link]

Awards and nominations[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: J. J. Abrams

• J. J. Abrams at the Internet Movie Database
• J. J. Abrams at AllRovi
• J.J. Abrams at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• J.J. Abrams at Lostpedia
• J. J. Abrams at TED Conferences
• J. J. Abrams on Charlie Rose
• Works by or about J. J. Abrams in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• J. J. Abrams collected news and commentary at The New York Times

Eric Clapton CBE
Clapton on stage at the Hard Rock Calling concert, Hyde Park, London on 28 June 2008.
Background information
Birth name	Eric Patrick Clapton
Also known as	Slowhand
Born	(1945-03-30) 30 March 1945 (age 67) Ripley, Surrey, England
Genres	Rock, blues rock, blues, psychedelic rock, hard rock
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, artist
Instruments	Vocals, guitar
Years active	1962–present
Labels	Warner Bros., Reprise, Polydor, RSO, Atco, Apple, Deram[1]
Associated acts	The Yardbirds, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Powerhouse, Cream, Free Creek, The Dirty Mac, Blind Faith, J.J. Cale, The Plastic Ono Band, Delaney, Bonnie & Friends, Derek and the Dominos, Sheryl Crow, The Beatles, Phil Collins, The Rolling Stones, Luciano Pavarotti, The Band, Freddie King, B.B. King, Mark Knopfler, Brian Wilson, John Mayer, Roger Waters, Dire Straits
Website	www.ericclapton.com
Notable instruments
See: Guitars section "Blackie": Fender Stratocaster "Brownie": Fender Stratocaster

Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, (born 30 March 1945) is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time.^[2] Clapton ranked second in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time"^[3] and fourth in Gibson's Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.^[4]

In the mid 1960s, Clapton departed from the Yardbirds to play blues with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. In his one-year stay with Mayall, Clapton gained the nickname "Slowhand". Immediately after leaving Mayall, Clapton formed Cream, a power trio with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and "arty, blues-based psychedelic pop." For most of the 1970s, Clapton's output bore the influence of the mellow style of J.J. Cale and the reggae of Bob Marley. His version of Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" helped reggae reach a mass market.^[5] Two of his most popular recordings were "Layla", recorded by Derek and the Dominos, another band he formed and Robert Johnson's "Crossroads", recorded by Cream. A recipient of seventeen Grammy Awards,^[6] in 2004 Clapton was awarded a CBE for services to music.^[7] In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers.^[8]

Early life[link]

Eric Patrick Clapton was born in Ripley, Surrey, England, the son of 16-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton (b. 7 January 1929 d. March 1999) and Edward Walter Fryer (21 March 1920 – 15 May 1985), a 25-year-old soldier from Montreal, Quebec.^[9] Fryer shipped off to war prior to Clapton's birth and then returned to Canada. Clapton grew up with his grandmother, Rose, and her second husband, Jack Clapp, who was stepfather to Patricia Clapton and her brother Adrian, believing they were his parents and that his mother was actually his older sister. The similarity in surnames gave rise to the erroneous belief that Clapton's real surname is Clapp (Reginald Cecil Clapton was the name of Rose's first husband, Eric Clapton's maternal grandfather).^[10] Years later, his mother married another Canadian soldier and moved to Germany,^[11] leaving young Eric with his grandparents in Surrey.^[12]

Clapton received an acoustic Hoyer guitar, made in Germany, for his thirteenth birthday, but the inexpensive steel-stringed instrument was difficult to play and he briefly lost interest.^[12] Two years later Clapton picked it up again and started playing consistently.^[12] Clapton was influenced by the blues from an early age, and practised long hours to learn the chords of blues music by playing along to the records.^[13] He preserved his practice sessions using his portable Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder, listening to them over and over until he felt he'd got it right.^[13][14]

After leaving Hollyfield School, in Surbiton, in 1961, Clapton studied at the Kingston College of Art but was dismissed at the end of the academic year because his focus remained on music rather than art. His guitar playing was so advanced that by the age of 16 he was getting noticed.^[14] Around this time Clapton began busking around Kingston, Richmond, and the West End.^[15] In 1962, Clapton started performing as a duo with fellow blues enthusiast David Brock in pubs around Surrey.^[14] When he was seventeen years old Clapton joined his first band, an early British R&B group, "The Roosters", whose other guitarist was Tom McGuinness. He stayed with this band from January through August 1963.^[16] In October of that year, Clapton did a seven-gig stint with Casey Jones & The Engineers.^[16]

Career[link]

1960s[link]

The Yardbirds and the Bluesbreakers[link]

In October 1963 Clapton joined The Yardbirds, a blues-influenced rock and roll band, and stayed with them until March 1965. Synthesising influences from Chicago blues and leading blues guitarists such as Buddy Guy, Freddie King, and B. B. King, Clapton forged a distinctive style and rapidly became one of the most talked-about guitarists in the British music scene.^[17] The band initially played Chess/Checker/Vee-Jay blues numbers and began to attract a large cult following when they took over the Rolling Stones' residency at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond. They toured England with American bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson II; a joint LP album, recorded in December 1963, was issued in 1965.

It was during this time period that Clapton's Yardbirds rhythm guitarist, Chris Dreja, recalled that whenever Clapton broke a guitar string during a concert, he would stay on stage and replace it. The English audiences would wait out the delay by doing what is called a "slow handclap". Clapton told his official biographer, Ray Coleman, that, "My nickname of 'Slowhand' came from Giorgio Gomelsky. He coined it as a good pun. He kept saying I was a fast player, so he put together the slow handclap phrase into Slowhand as a play on words".^[18]

In March 1965 the Yardbirds had their first major hit, "For Your Love", on which Clapton played guitar. The Yardbirds elected to move toward a pop-oriented sound, in part because of the success of "For Your Love", written by pop songwriter-for-hire Graham Gouldman, who had also written hit songs for Herman's Hermits and The Hollies. Still musically devoted to the blues, Clapton was opposed to the move, and left the band. He recommended fellow guitarist Jimmy Page as his replacement, but Page was at that time unwilling to relinquish his lucrative career as a freelance studio musician, so Page in turn recommended Clapton's successor, Jeff Beck.^[17] While Beck and Page played together in the Yardbirds, the trio of Beck, Page, and Clapton were never in the group together. However, the trio did appear on the 12-date benefit tour for Action for Research into Multiple Sclerosis in 1983, as well as on the album Guitar Boogie.

Clapton joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers in April 1965, only to quit a few months later. In the summer of 1965 he left for Greece with a band called The Glands, which included his old friend Ben Palmer on piano. In November 1965 he rejoined John Mayall. During his second Bluesbreakers stint, Clapton gained a reputation as the best blues guitarist on the club circuit. Although Clapton gained world fame for his playing on the influential album, Blues Breakers – John Mayall – With Eric Clapton, this album was not released until Clapton had left the Bluesbreakers for the last time. Having swapped his Fender Telecaster and Vox AC30 amplifier for a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar and Marshall amplifier, Clapton's sound and playing inspired a well-publicised graffiti that deified him with the famous slogan "Clapton is God". The phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington Underground station in the autumn of 1967. The graffiti was captured in a now-famous photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall. Clapton is reported to have been embarrassed by the slogan, saying in his The South Bank Show profile in 1987, "I never accepted that I was the greatest guitar player in the world. I always wanted to be the greatest guitar player in the world, but that's an ideal, and I accept it as an ideal". The phrase began to appear in other areas of Islington throughout the mid 1960s.^[19]

Cream[link]

Clapton left the Bluesbreakers in July 1966 (to be replaced by Peter Green) and formed Cream, one of the earliest supergroups, with Jack Bruce on bass (also of Manfred Mann, the Bluesbreakers, and the Graham Bond Organisation) and Ginger Baker on drums (another member of the Graham Bond Organisation). Before the formation of Cream, Clapton was not well known in the United States; he left the Yardbirds before "For Your Love" hit the American Top Ten, and had yet to perform there.^[20] During his time with Cream, Clapton began to develop as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, though Bruce took most of the lead vocals and wrote the majority of the material with lyricist Pete Brown.^[17] Cream's first gig was an unofficial performance at the Twisted Wheel Club in Manchester on 29 July 1966 before their full debut two nights later at the National Jazz and Blues Festival in Windsor. Cream established its enduring legend with the high-volume blues jamming and extended solos of their live shows.

In early 1967 Clapton's status as Britain's top guitarist was rivalled by the emergence of Jimi Hendrix, an acid rock-infused guitarist who used wailing feedback and effects pedals to create new sounds for the instrument. Hendrix attended a performance of the newly-formed Cream at the Central London Polytechnic on 1 October 1966, during which Hendrix sat in on a double-timed version of "Killing Floor". Top UK stars including Clapton, Pete Townshend, and members of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles avidly attended Hendrix's early club performances. Hendrix's arrival had an immediate and major effect on the next phase of Clapton's career, although Clapton continued to be recognised in UK music polls as the premier guitarist.