Ry Cooder

I've recently digitized six Ry Cooder albums, produced from the early 70's to the mid 80's.

In chronological order:

Into the Purple Valley

Boomer's Story

Paradise and Lunch

Chicken Skin Music

Bop 'til you Drop

Slide Area

Ry's a prolific guy; had a quite few more albums between and since then, including, but not limited to Jazz, Borderline, and Buena Vista Social Club.

Ry didn't write a lot, but really pulled some gems from the American musical canon, from obscure acoustic blues guys, Bachrach, Johnny Cash, Elvis, depression-era folk stuff, early funk, name a genre, he's probably mined it.

Our friend Mr. Mohney also gave me a CD of Talking Timbuktu with Ali Farka Toure, something completely different from all of the above.

That early era saw him working with Jim Dickenson a lot,, who produced and played on his first couple of albums. Again the LA session guys who were doing stuff for the Warner-Reprise stable get in on a lot of the earlier stuff. Keltner, Milt Holland, Red Callender, RussTitelman, a lot of those folks. John Hiatt sings background vox on Slide Area, a collaboration that later found great traction in Hiatt's own stuff and Little Village.

Obviously, I like the guy, and I'm happy to say this is some of the stuff that holds up. I like his slide playing--always tasteful, clean and innovative. But I think the thing that brings me back to his material is he had some monster grooves. Check out Down in Hollywood or Look at Granny Run from Bop 'til you Drop. Or go back to Paradise and Lunch and listen to Fool for a Cigarette or Married Man's a Fool. Just about any of the albums above are going to have at least one or two tunes that will pull all but the most hidebound white guys out of their seats. But, of course, I'm a fool for a groove. You could probably put Mein Kampf to a good groove and I'd be right there telling you it was okay. What did that song say? Who gives a s*&t, it was right in the pocket.