“Call Me The Breeze” by Lynyrd Skynyrd

Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Call Me the Breeze" rides in on Second Helping in 1974, a J.J. Cale song that first turned up opening Cale's 1971 debut, Naturally. Cale cut it as a lazy 12-bar shuffle ticking along to an early drum machine; Skynyrd bolt a jet engine onto it. Allen Collins, Ed King and Gary Rossington stack their electric guitars three deep, Billy Powell's piano rolls underneath, and Bobby Keys, Trevor Lawrence and Steve Madaio blow hot horns over Bob Burns and Leon Wilkeson's stomping rhythm.

Ronnie Van Zant drawls it with the ease of a man with nowhere to be, and Al Kooper, producing and engineering, keeps the whole mob loose enough to swing. The song came back on the 1976 live disc One More from the Road.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.