The Definitive Collection

With his dry-as-the-desert vocal approach and his sparse, easy, laid-back writing style, not to mention his swampy, reverb-drenched guitar playing, J.J. Cale has one card that he keeps playing over and over again, and more often than not, it takes the trick. Too many Cale songs in a row, though, and it all starts to sound like one big song suite or a car going down the road stuck in second gear. This 20-song best-of is exactly the same, with an identical cover and song sequence, as Mercury's Definitive Collection, issued in 1998. In either incarnation, it makes for a nice sampler of Cale's influential early recordings.