Hear Eric Clapton Cover JJ Cale’s ‘Cajun Moon’ – Premiere

UPDATE: iTunes is now streaming Clapton’s album on First Play.

On July 29th, Eric Clapton is releasing The Breeze, an LP of songs originally recorded by recently deceased southern guitar hero JJ Cale. Although the former Cream guitarist scored Seventies solo hits with covers of Cale’s “Cocaine” and “After Midnight,” his new album features guests like Mark Knopfler, Tom Petty, John Mayer, Willie Nelson and Derek Trucks and tracks like “Call Me the Breeze” and “Cajun Moon.” Both tunes can be streamed below, and while the former, the blues number that led off Cale’s debut, has been out for nearly a month, the latter had not been previously released.

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In an interview in the current issue of Rolling Stone, Clapton remembered the early stages of this project: “When I started talking about this album with Dave Kaplan, who runs [Clapton’s label] Surfdog, he had only heard the JJ songs that I covered. In Europe, we heard JJ as Americana, all the roots put together. JJ was very self-critical, dismissive about his gifts. He was happy to just be known as a songwriter. But when I tried to play like him – it’s beyond most musicians.”