Because Music releases Stay Around, the first posthumous release of works by beloved songwriter, guitarist, and singer JJ Cale, compiled by those closest to him — his widow, musician Christine Lakeland Cale, and friend and longtime manager, Mike Kappus.

The album has received universal praise, with the Associated Press writing “Stay Around” feels as vital and inviting as Cale usually did,” and No Depression adding it “works so well because the songs are all up to Cale’s usual standard.”

In compiling Stay Around, Christine pored over these songs, both studio and home recordings, that the public had never heard. The result is an album mixed and produced by Cale himself, left nearly untouched to leave, in Christine’s words, the “Cale Factor.” The only song not written by Cale is Christine’s “My Baby Blues,” the first song she and Cale cut as a four-piece combo in Bradley’s Barn studio in 1977, the year they met.