To my mind, Ry Cooder is one of the most under-rated artists
of the rock era. OK, he’s #31 on Rolling Stone’s list of the top 100 greatest
guitarists in rock, which ain’t exactly chopped liver. And their write-up is
nothing if not adulatory.
“Cooder's life on
guitar,” Rolling Stone reports, “has
been distinguished by a rare mix of archaic fundamentals and exploratory
passion, from his emergence as a teenage blues phenomenon with Taj Mahal and Captain Beefheart in the mid-Sixties to his roots-and-noir film soundtracks and central role
in the birth and success of the 1996 Havana supersession Buena Vista Social Club. As a sideman, Cooder has brought true grit and emotional nuance to
classic albums by Randy Newman, the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. Cooder is also a soulful preservationist, keeping vital pasts alive and
dynamic in the modern world.”
Wikipedia says, “(Ry
Cooder) is a multi-instrumentalist, but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and his collaborations
with traditional musicians from many countries. His solo work has been
eclectic, encompassing many genres including Americana, folk, blues, Tex-Mex, soul, gospel, rock, and much more.”
Yeah, much more. Or,
maybe much less. I mean, I don’t care how you slice and dice it. Sure, this is
a folk song. That’s a blues. That’s gospel., and that’s rock ‘n’ roll. But, no,
it’s not a little bit of this and a little bit of that. At it’s heart, Ry
Cooder’s music is just one thing, and that is, well, it’s Ry Cooder’s music. It
comes from a heart and a voice and a soul that over almost 50 years, now, has
proven that it runs hot and it runs deep.
And of course, he is not just a guitarist. Yes, that's his calling card. Nobody would call him a great singer. But he sings, he plays guitar, he composes and arranges complete musical experiences. He is a true auteur of rock music, broadly defined. It is in that category that he is so sorely underrated.
The Slide Area
Still Wikipedia has
it mostly right. The essence of Ry Cooder’s heart and soul is his guitar, and
especially his slide guitar. His is the brightest, most phosphorescent,
delicate and expressive tonality in rock music. It doesn’t matter what he’s
playing. That’s Ry Cooder on the guitar. You can hear it. You can feel it.
And, yes, there’s
his rootsy-ness. But what, exactly, does that mean? From 1970 to 1987 he
released 11 albums, almost entirely made up of covers. Ry didn’t really write
in those days. And more than anything, he was covering songs from his youth,
the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.
“Money Honey” by
Jesse Stone (1953), “The Dark End of the Street” by Dan Penn and Chips Moman
(1967), “It’s All Over Now” by Bobby and Shirley Womack (1964), “Stand by Me”
by Ben E. King (1961), “I Can’t Win” by Lester Johnson, Clifford Knight and
Dave Richardson, “Little Sister” by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman (1961), “Go Home,
Girl,” Arthur Alexander (1962), “I Think It’s Going to Work Out Fine” by Rose
Marie McCoy and Sylvia McKinney (1961), “634-5789” by Steve Cropper and Eddie
Floyd (1966), “Get Rhythm” by Johnny Cash (1956), and many, many more.
Yes, there’s Woody
Guthrie and Leadbelly and Alfred Reed (“How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and
Live” from 1929) and Blind Willie McTell. But this isn’t just roots music. This
is protest music, a genre that is virtually dead today but for Cooder. He’s not
singing them because they’re old. He’s singing them because they’re not old, or
antiquated. They’re as alive and relevant today as they were in the old Dust
Bowl. And more than Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger or anybody else working today, he
is channeling the voice of Woody Guthrie. He sees the exploitation and greed in
today’s world—the same exploitation and greed that Woody saw in his day—and he
is willing to call it by its rightful name.
It all comes together
in his own recent (21st century) composition, “El Corrida de Jesse
James,” in which the outlaw Jesse James is up in heaven. He sees the greed and
corruption on Wall Street today, and he begs God to give him his .44 back and
to let him go back to earth to make things right. But once here, he finds that
the corruption runs so wide and so deep that, as Cooder says in his
introduction, “one man with a gun can’t do much about it.”
Ry Cooder’s Blues
And, then, there’s
this. Like they say of Eric Clapton, Cooder’s not black, but he’s had the
blues. He has a right to sing the blues, because he’s had them. Nobody could
sing so many incredibly sad and heart-broken ballads over the year who hasn’t
felt it.
So there’s “The Dark
End of the Street” (1972), “The Way We Make a Broken Heart” (1980), “That’s the
Way Love Turned Out for Me” (1982), “5000 Country Songs” (2008), and lots more.
Cooder’s vocals have always been looked at as a throw-away element in his
music—you know, passable; acceptable only because he’s also a world-class
guitarist. But the pain that he captures and conveys on songs like these is
palpable, and evidence of a real vocal talent and a real genuine feeling for,
well, that feeling of the blues.
Here it all comes
together, ironically, in an instrumental. The title, “It’s Gonna Work Out
Fine,” (Cooder titled it “I Think It’s Going to Work Out Fine”) speaks for
itself, right? Things are gonna work out. Well, not to hear Cooder play a
mournful slide guitar version at a dirge-like pace. In his hands—with his voice
and heart and soul—it’s one of the most beautiful and saddest songs ever
recorded in rock music.
So there’s the slide
guitar, and there’s that down-and-out attitude, whether it’s expressed in
social or personal terms. And finally, there’s the whole world music, Tex-Mex
and Cuban eclecticism. Some people remember that it was he who rediscovered the
Cuban music sound and brought it one last gasp of fame and popularity through
the recording of The Buena Vista Social
Club in 1997. He followed that up with a Cuban record of his own, with
guitarist Manuel Galban, called Mambo
Sinuendo, in 2003.
But most importantly
here, he has incorporated Tex-Mex into his own sound. It’s not an excursion,
it’s not an exploration, it’s there in the heart and soul of Ry Cooder. His
long history of collaboration with Flaco Jimenez is the most tangible evidence.
But, then, on his 2013 live album, Live
in San Francisco, there’s a Tex-Mex horn section that absolutely rips
things up in a mariachi style.
Timeline
1. As noted above,
from 1970 to 1987 three were 11 LPs consisting almost entirely of covers. The
slide guitar, the roots (including the old roots, the Dust Bowl ballads and the
like, and the new roots, the ‘50s and ‘60s R& B), the down-and-out,
underdog attitude (whether politically or romantically motivated) were all
there in equal parts, and Tex-Mex became more and more of the sound as time
went by.
The last of these,
1987’s Have a Ball, was more
electric, more rock ‘n’ roll, but only in hindsight does it suggest any changes
in direction for Cooder. And, yet, it would be 18 years before he would release
another solo record.
His following seems
to have been pretty consistent throughout this period. His first record, Ry Cooder, charted at #216, but created
some positive word of mouth and, as a result, his second record, Into the Purple Valley, charted at #113.
Two other records charted at #167 and #177 (we don’t have numbers for some of
the others), but his biggest hit was appropriately enough his best record, Bop Til You Drop (1979) at #62. This was
certainly in part because it was supported by his first-ever single release,
“Little Sister.”
2. From 1988 through
2004, Cooder abandoned solo recordings of rock ‘n’ roll music. Instead, he
wrote and performed for a number of movie soundtracks. Actually, he’d been
doing them quite regularly since 1980, and Primary
Colors in 1998 was #15. That, along with Paris, Texas (1985), Crossroads
(1986) and Trespass (1993) are
probably the best known.
Then there was the Cuban
thing. Cuban music had had a run of popularity as a novelty on the American pop
charts in the 1950s. It was flashy, syncopated, big band dance music. Perez
Prado and his band were the most popular of them. A cha-cha version of Prado’s
“Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” was a #1 hit in 1955, and his “Patricia” also
got to #1 in 1958.
Cooder produced Buena Vista Social Club in 1995
featuring several of the leading Cuban artists still living, then recorded his
own Cuban record, a collaboration with guitarist Manuel Galban in 2003. Mambo Sinuendo, which included a cover
of “Patricia,” became Cooder’s biggest hit ever, charting at #52. It was also
#1 on the World and on the Latin charts. (Buena
Vista Social Club, on which he did not play, topped out at #80.)
He also recorded Little Village with John Hiatt, Nick
Lowe and Jim Keltner (it charted at #66), as well as collaborations with Ali
Farka Toure and the Chieftans.
This was his most
successful period in terms of charting and also industry recognition, as he
received a total of 6 Grammies, mostly in the world and Latin categories. His
more conventional folk-blues has never been so honored.
3. Then in 2005 came
his first solo recording in 18 years, and the 1st recording in a
so-called “California Trilogy” that came to include Chavez Ravine, My Name Is Buddy and I, Flathead. Now Cooder was not just a performer but a songwriter
as well. Most of the tunes on these 3 records are Cooder originals, some of
them co-written with his son and drummer, Joaquin Cooder, and some co-written
with others.
My Name Is Buddy charted at #168 (#40 in Switzerland, #41 in
the U.K.). We don’t have numbers for the other two.
The musical style is
all over the board. Chavez Ravine,
the story of a lost Hispanic neighborhood in L.A. and the baseball stadium that
supplanted it, is mostly Tex-Mex. My Name
Is Buddy is acoustic folk, very much reminiscent of his Leadbelly and Woody
repertoire. And I, Flathead, well,
it’s rootsy, too, but recalling more those days of Cooder’s youth in the late
‘50s and early ‘60s. The Flathead of the title, a play on Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, is a Ford Flathead engine, by
the way.
In 2013 he released
a live album that had to have been a conscious effort to recap his entire
career—more specifically, the entire core of his entire career. The Cuban music
of his middle period, his most popular recording ever, is not represented. But
otherwise, you’ve got 3 really rootsy tunes, meaning compositions of Woody
Guthrie and Leadbelly. You’re got the ‘60s roots in “Why Don’t You Try Me” and
“The Dark End of the Street.”
But mostly you’ve
got the Tex-Mex sound of Flaco Jimenez and a mariachi-style horn section that
rips it up on “El Corrida de Jesse James” and others.
This was his 1st
live album since Show Time in 1977.
What's Next
Currently Cooder is
touring with Ricky Skaggs and Mrs. Skaggs, Sharon White. What will come out of
the collaboration remains to be seen, as is what Cooder does after that.
What here for a
follow-up which will be a ranking of Cooder’s best LPs and best songs.
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