I don't know if the official certifiers (whoever and whatever those mysterious trolls might be) of the year's top albums have gotten around to their latest proclamations yet, but when they do there'd better be room on that list for one J.J. Cale. Of course, making the Top Ten ain't what it used to be, but J.J. just naturally ought to ease his way onto even a truncated list.

This lad—with the most insinuating vocals around, one or two sparkling new guitar licks, and a total lack of pretension—has injected new life into that turbid river of blues and jazz and rock and country known as Southern music. Cale is in a direct line of such Southern innovators as Doug Sahm, Tony Joe White and Dr. John, each of whom has dipped out his own brand of Southern sensibility, added a pinch of gris-gris or Chicano music or early jazz or swamp blues according to individual taste, swirled it around a little, and poured out something clear and fresh.

Really, Cale's second album, is Southern fried grit out of Hollywood via Muscle Shoals, Nashville and Mt. Juliet. And there's a little Mose Allison in there too, somewhere. In fact, if you sit back and sip a little sour mash and listen without thinking too hard to a cut like "Everything Will Be Alright," you might justifiedly imagine that someone like Mississippi John Hurt had been accidentally reincarnated into the body of Mose Allison, only Mose hadn't evacuated it yet, so what you had was Mose and John singing a duet out of the same mouth. That's what J.J. sounds like, yeah. I saw him recently in an auditorium concert and it just didn't work, just as it wouldn't work with an intimate singer like Mose.

His voice, seemingly without trying, is really the lead instrument here. Back on "Everything Will Be Alright," his vocal fades after the first two minutes and the final 1:16 is instrumental and I suddenly sat bolt upright. Something was wrong. It was as if Duane Allman suddenly unplugged and walked off stage. Something was missing.

Oddly, though, you find that the words don't really matter. After the third or fourth time, I quit trying to transcribe his lyrics and enjoyed them as sounds: sly, devious, sinuous notes. Like Mose and few other singers, Cale doesn't fight a song; rather, he flows effortlessly along with it. Snake-like, his voice waits for an opening, and then wriggles its way in until it has taken over.

His voice is so offhandedly dominant that you might not realize that Really was cut in five different studios with different musicians in each. The backing ranges from the full Muscle Shoals brass treatment to a Nashville string band, yet the end result is the same: you invariably find your attention focused only on his vocals.

Muddy Waters' "Mo Jo" was cut in Nashville and you might not recognize it, but I think you'll like it. The only other non-Cale composition was also recorded in Nashville and you may not recognize it either, but Don Nix's "Going Down" (which you'll probably remember from Freddie King's full-blown, driving arrangement) is virtually a masterpiece of economical, understated blues. And that's not the easiest thing in the world to successfully pull off.

I do have one minor complaint. "Right Down Here" sounds uncomfortably like "Lies." Otherwise, OK. And, bookers: Please see about getting J.J. out of the auditoriums and into the clubs. (RS 127)

CHET FLIPPO