Ry Cooder Part 1: The Irreverent Archeologist
(for context: the introduction)
The Ry Chronicles, vol. 1
(March 3rd, 2018)
Unless you’re a regular SotD contributor, you might not have seen this coming. Let me give you some brief context: I’ve undertaken a journey through the American musical canon as heard through the ears of the great Ry Cooder. Each week I’ll share a single song from each of his albums, in chronological order. The less questions you ask the better. Just sit back and enjoy.
Ry’s first record was self-titled and seems to emerge unbidden from the primordial mud of several folk traditions. With no context, people are apt to wonder “Is this blues? Is it folk? Is it some weird rock thing that doesn’t actually rock?” It’s really not productive to try to answer any of those questions either.
Our track of the week represents several of Ry’s trademarks. Great guitar playing, mixed twice as loud as the drums but always tasteful and on point. A hard luck story about the shit that poor people in this country deal with every day. A cover of an American classic.
It’s Woody Guthrie tune that was as relevant today as it was 50 years ago when Ry cut it, and 20 years before that when Woody wrote it.
Enjoy,
S
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Ry spends Week 2 in the Purple Valley
(March 8th, 2018)
Mr Cooder’s second record digs deeper into that hallowed ground that he staked out with the Guthrie cover from last week. Lots of scenes of dusty folks scraping in the California dirt.
I read somewhere (I think in the liner notes to his Anthology The UFO Has Landed) that Ry once said “my whole career pretty much boils down to two good ideas: playing guitar in a banjo tuning, and playing mandolin in a rock group.” This classic gunfighter ballad showcases both of Ry’s self-proclaimed good ideas, and let’s nothing else get in the way of either them. Also — shoutout to Noah B — this song has got to be at least 100 years old.
Sidebar on the “banjo tuning” he mentions: for a lot of his slide playing, and often his regular electric stuff too, he tunes his guitar to open-G almost the same as a normal 5-string banjo tuning. He showed Keith Richards this tuning in the late 60’s and Keith promptly took the low string of his guitars and wrote most of his best riffs (“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” is my favorite example, but if you want more, feel free to contact Julian Carta for a complete list of Keef riffs in open-G). This is story is directly from Keith’s autobiography. To my knowledge, Ry never took public credit for it.
S
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Ry Week 3: “At the dark end…”
(March 15, 2018)
Ry’s 3rd effort, 1972’s Boomer’s Story, is a varied affair. While it doesn’t hold together quite like his first two, thematically at least, but it’s the first time you get a glimpse of his genuine embrace of eclecticism.
“The Dark End of the Street” is a solid gold soul jam that was originally recorded by James Carr in 1966. In the six years between that record and Ry’s cut, it was recorded by Percy Sledge, Dolly Parton, Aretha Franklin, and Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers, among others. By 1972, Ry didn’t even feel a need to sing the words. This is the first real highlight of Ry’s true gift: making that slide guitar sing.
S
Encore track: I could listen to this song on repeat and feel better about it each time, but there are some other real gems on this record too. Carrying on the theme from last week, this tune is maybe the most badass mandolin blues playing I’ve heard on record. A walking talking tribute to Ry’s disdain for metronomes and the drummers who play to them.
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Ry volume 4: All the money in the world spent on feeling good
(March 25th, 2018)
Sorry for being a few days late this week, but let me say right off the top that is the album that made me fall in love with Ry. His fourth record: 1974’s Paradise And Lunch.
I checked it out of the UVa music library sometime in the early 2000’s and at the time it felt like a perfect album. It still hits that elusive spot for me, deep deep roots but with an adventurous spirit. This, to me, is the pinnacle of Phase I of Ry’s career, wherein his albums were almost entirely full of off-beat reworkings of old folk and blues tunes. He knocks it out of the park on almost track here.
As for this week’s selection, it was a tough choice but I had to highlight one my favorite lyrics in the entire English-language pop canon:
“Feelin’ good, feelin’ good. All the money in the world spent on feeling good.”
Not only is this line transcendent in terms of both simplicity and philosophical heft, but my entire family has been sick all week from this brief relapse of winter that we’ve been having and right about now I would throw down literally any amount of money to flip a switch and have us all feeling good again.
Wish us luck with recovery and let me make one final recommendation to enjoy this album in its entirety. I did it again this morning. It always goes down smooth.
S
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Ry, the fifth: stamp your passport
(March 31st, 2018)
For those of us who first met Ry in the 90’s, he seemed to be some sort continent-hopping global citizen, a far cry from the dusty folk/blues archeologist that we’ve gotten to know on his first four records. 1976’s Chicken Skin Music gives us the first glimmer of how far Ry was apt to wander.
There is an argument to be made that this is Ry’s most eclectic record, which is a little bit like saying The Dude is the laziest man in Los Angeles County. There is plenty of folk and blues, but mixed in some more contemporary R&B, a healthy spoonful of South of the Border flavor, and a few collaborations with traditional Hawaiian musicians.
This week’s pick introduces us to Mr Flaco Jimenez. Flaco would become a stalwart Ry collaborator for the next several decades (he even reemerged on Ry’s 2013 live record with the Corridos Famosos band). In an interview tacked onto the beginning this excellent 1987 concert film, Ry says “Flaco brings his reality to the stage…you hear him play and you know this isn’t a guy who hangs out at parties in Hollywood.”
“He’ll Have To Go” plants one foot firmly on each side of Tex-Mex. A 1959 hit for country singer Jim Reeves, transported across the Rio Grande by Flaco’s accordion and Bobby King’s harmony vocals.
Two other tracks worth highlighting — both because they showcase just how eclectic this record is, and because I love them — are “Always Lift Him Up” (a classic loser’s anthem if there ever was one medley’d with a traditional Hawaiian tune for the bridge section) and the tasty R&B jam “Smack Dab in the Middle” (one of my dad’s all-time favorite Ry cuts).
In view of this stylistic adventurousness, it is worth noting that Ry has always been a product of his native Los Angeles. While these genres may not fit nicely next to each other in a record store bin or a Spotify playlist, they could all be found coming out of store and house windows on various corners throughout his hometown. It’s what makes LA a quintessentially American city and Ry a quintessentially American talent.
S
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Ry week 6, live and in person
(April 4th, 2018)
Ry’s sixth record is his first live one: 1976’s Show Time. I considered skipping it (I may skip some of the later live ones) but I decided not to, mostly because it allows me the chance to post a song that I had to skip over a few weeks ago.
“Jesus on the Mainline” is credited as “traditional” when it appears on Paradise and Lunch. As you’ll quickly notice, it is about calling your savior on the telephone, so its tradition can’t go much farther back than 1876, and probably a bit later than that. Still, a little light googling on my part can’t find any better credit to give, so there you have it.
The album version is still one of my favorite Ry cuts of all time, but this live one features Ry playing acoustic slide as the only instrument. It’s quite a tasty showcase.
Jumping back to the album for a minute, I had actually never listened to this one before. It’s a solid performance and features the vocal trio of Bobby King, Terry Evans, and Eldridge King, some combination of which would accompany Ry on and off for several decades. It’s also another striking display of eclecticism. Ry chooses to augment himself onstage with an R&B vocal trio, an accordion, a Mexican bajo sexto in place of a rhythm guitar, and jazz saxophone. Not your typical white guy 70’s rock band.
All that said, the exact same band performing a similar setlist from the same tour can be found in several places on YouTube. The best of which, at least in terms of production is probably this Old Grey Whistle Test show from 1977. If you’re gonna dedicate 40 minutes to Ry this week, and you can watch while you listen, I’d recommend that over the record. If for no other reason than Ry’s shirt and Eldridge’s bell-bottoms. The 70’s really had a vibe.
S
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Ry #7: the traditionalist emerges
(April 15th, 2018)
I’ve made a big point throughout this trip to point out that, while Ry is an avid musicologist, he makes a point not to just reproduce old styles that he digs up and dusts off. 1978’s Jazz is the first counter-example. By far his most traditionalist album, at least to date, it’s not coincidentally one of my least favorites. Some great playing of course, but a lot of it fairly faithfully reproduces pre-bebop jazz.
My highlighted track gets a bit weird, though it is one of three tunes written by Bix Beiderbecke, a titan of the aforementioned era who was one of the stars from that generation that first brought the art form out of New Orleans and into dance halls around the midwest and ultimately across the country.
Anyway, not a bad record, but one of the few where Ry settles for reproduction instead of pushing through to reinterpretation. Don’t worry, next week we get back on track with an album that, when I bought it in a vintage clothing store 35 years after its release, was a-fixed with the sticker “Rock’s 1st All-Digital Recording!”
S
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On The 8th Week of Ry
(April 22nd, 2018)
After a brief detour last week into imitation and preservation, this week Ry swings it back on the highway and puts the pedal down. 1979’s Bop Till You Drop is another of my favorite Ry albums and, in my mind at least, officially announces phase 2 of Ry’s career.
While the 70’s saw Ry mining deep veins of folk and gospel and telling tales of gun fighters and farmers and dust bowl migrants, in the 80’s his protagonists are more likely to drive a Cadillac than push a plow. Bop Till You Drop is almost entirely comprised of songs from the first generation of Rock & Roll. The wonderful thing Ry is that he treats these 15 year-old pop tunes the same way he treats 100 year-old outlaw ballads: as great songs.
Ry has always been obsessed with the old blues tropes of the ramblin’ man and the cheatin’ woman and good old drunk who can’t catch a break. (I actually don’t know much at all about his personal life, but given these recurring plotlines, we can only imagine.) In some strange way, this thematic continuation serves to unite the grimey old blues and country tunes from his 70’s records with the pop and R&B of his 80’s records. Just little portraits from the streets and backroads of this American land.
Ry spent the 80’s living a bit of a double life. In addition of continuing a steady output of solo albums, he released soundtracks for 10 feature films over the course of 10 years. More on that in the next week or two, but for now we concentrate on the first in a string of great solo albums. I sincerely recommend it all the way through. The opening track “Little Sister” is a stone cold classic, originally cut by Elvis; there are a pair of gospel influenced cuts featuring Bobby King; and the lone original “Down In Hollywood” features a great groove and some near perfect lines like “down in Hollywood, they’re standing on the corner, just waiting for a sucker like you.” But this week I’m gonna highlight a tasty duet with the mighty Chaka Khan. The same guy who spent last week imitating Bix Bideirbacke, spends this week dropping tracks that share space on the charts next to Rick James and The Ohio Players.
Enjoy,
S
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Week 9: Ry goes to Hollywood
(April 29th, 2018)
(“wait, didn’t Ry grow up in Hollywood?” Well, almost, he’s from Santa Monica, but…)
As mentioned previously, Ry’s 80’s output featured about three times as many movie soundtracks as it did “Ry Cooder” albums. I won’t highlight all of them here, but a few will get their moment.
Ry’s first venture into film was 1980’s “The Long Riders”. It’s a telling of the Jesse James legend that’s notable for featuring a cast where four sets of real brothers play four sets of brothers in the movie. It’s also notable for the Ry Cooder soundtrack, which gives Ry the chance to dive back into that dusty outlaw/cowboy shit that he loves so much, but that has been largely absent from his previous few records.
This week’s selection comes with a small anecdote, and a shout-out to my father-in-law. Nine weeks ago, when we started this journey together, I got a response from Dan Burke that said something like “this is great! I was actually just watching YouTube trying to learn this mandolin tune that Ry does on the Long Riders soundtrack!”
And so we present “Seneca Square Dance aka Waiting For The Federales”
I hope you figured it out Dan. Maybe we can jam on it next time you come up. Next week we’ll be back to that old time Rock & Roll, but for now enjoy some Old Time with a capital “O”.
S
PS- totally unrelated sidenote that I just read on his wiki page: “He has had a glass eye since he was four, when he accidentally stuck a knife in his left eye.” Yoiks! As a new parent, that story is a little chilling. Anyway, it seems oddly appropriate to share along with this song. This is the kinda thing that’s only supposed to happen in places and times where they make music like this.
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on the 10th week of Ry
(May 6th, 2018)
The ninth “Ry Cooder” album, 1980’s Borderline, came heavy on the heels of Bop Till You Drop and it’s easy to see the connection. As he did with delta blues and Okie folk in the early 70’s, around the turn of the decade Ry has stumbled into a passionate and quite productive love affair with the R&B and pop music of his youth.
This album features most of the same band mines much of the same repertoire of under-appreciated gems from the 50’s and early 60’s. On the whole, I don’t find like it quite as much Bop but I’m still a pretty big fan.
It has a handful of notable moments, including Ry’s first collaboration with Mr John Hiatt (more on that in the coming weeks) and some more classic Cadillac-era American wisdom like “every woman is crazy ‘bout an automobile / and here I am standing in nothing but rubber heels.”
But the tune I’m featuring is one those classic Ry cuts that doesn’t quite fit into any genre but “Ry.” Originally a 1968 soul single from the (semi-obscure) Chess records duo Maurice & Mac, on Borderline it showcases the fact that Ry has grasped the genius of reggae that so many white musicians seem to miss: it’s the drummer!
I don’t think I’ve specifically called out Mr Jim Keltner yet, but let me take a minute to do it here. He’s one of my favorite drummers of all time, in large part due to his long and musically intimate relationship with Ry. He has played with shining stars ranging from Paul McCartney to Randy Newman to Bill Frisell, but something about his vibe with Ry is pure alchemy. His weird upside down groove on this tune takes it right over the top.
Alright, that’s all for now. I do recommend this album as a whole if you get the chance this week. Bon voyage for now.
S
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Ry #11: a (slightly delayed) pleasant surprise
(May 15th, 2018)
Apologies upfront for missing this update last week. I listened to album mid-week, and was pleasantly surprised, but then the end of the week got a bit hectic and I never wrote the email. Look forward to a double shot of Ry to catch us up this week.
1982’s The Slide Area was another one of the select few classic Ry albums that I had never listened to. Upon queuing up track 1, I thought I knew why…
Ry had this tendency to occasionally emerge from his archeological digs through the record bins and take a shot at something that might be called “contemporary.” The Chaka Khan duet from a few weeks ago is a prime example of when that went well. Unfortunately a lot of these ventures, especially from the 80’s, end up in the “It seemed like a good idea at the time…” bin. The first track on this record is one of the latter.
But once we get beyond that, it’s actually a pretty solid record! I guess you could argue that it doesn’t break much new ground. And you would be right. For most of the 80’s, Ry’s solo output consisted of him, Jim Keltner, and a scattering of other friends and associates continuing to churn out weird versions of (mostly obscure) selections from the previous three decades. This week’s pick fits the bill although, while it is plenty weird, the tune is certainly not obscure.
The playing and singing is top notch as always, especially from Keltner. That said, it fits the formula. Ry’s double life in the 80’s has already been mentioned. This quasi-formulaic tendency in his solo records should be taken in the context of his contemporaneous reinvention as a film score composer. Next week, we head back to the movies. It would be 5 more years before Ry reconvened Keltner and friends for another solo record.
S
PS — since I spent a whole paragraph talking shit about it, I might as well include a link to it. Ladies and gentlemen, let me present “The UFO Has Landed In The Ghetto” composed and performed by Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner. It’s actually kind of a cool track, and certainly weird, but it also makes painfully clear that Ry is both a) not a lyricist and b) smart to typically record almost entirely reworkings of other people’s songs. Also, it should be noted that he wasn’t exactly behind the times, but when you compare this to things like Prince and Talking Heads that were happening at the time, it doesn’t exactly hold up so well. It’s also a pretty obvious P-Funk tribute, and no one can do P-Funk justice except P-Funk. And maybe D’Angelo.
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Week 12: Ry goes to Paris
(May 20th, 2018)
Paris, Texas that is. As I mentioned last week, it would be five years before Ry reconvened some of his regulars for another solo record. In the meantime, he managed to compose and record music for six feature films. The third of those was 1984’s Paris, Texas, which won the Palm D’Or at Cannes, among other honors.
I’ve never seen the movie, but the plot summary on Wikipedia sounds fascinating. The setting is West Texas and the musical vibe is somewhat reminiscent of the timeless Ennio Morricone scores from the classic Westerns of decades past.
The theme song employs those echoing haunting guitars that immediately conjure images of ambiguous trouble in the high lonesome desert. Obviously, this sound (or certainly the synthesizer pads that back it up, not to mention orchestral flourishes Morricone painted with) where not literally the soundtrack to the historical Wild Wild West. But somehow they seem to evoke it better than any old cowboy campfire song ever could. Such is the magic of anachronism.
Enjoy the track and briefly immerse yourself in mysteries of the wild open plains of the American West.
S
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Lucky Week 13: Ry goes down to the Crossroads
(May 27th, 2018)
This week is a tribute to Sam Wilson and his love of both hideous 80’s cheese and tasty blues guitar playing.
Our man Ry obviously shares a love for both of those things as well, as evidenced by his work in the 1986 film Crossroads. The basic plot summary is Ralph Macchio gets sick of being the Karate Kid and decides he wants to be a guitar slinger instead, so he moves down to the delta and tries to find a devil to sell his soul to in exchange for some tasty licks. (Disclaimer: I haven’t seen the movie, this is just what I gleaned from watching the YouTube clips that are linked in this email. And from Sam.)
The good news is that all of Karate Kid’s guitar playing in the movie is actually overdubbed by Ry! There is also a fair amount of other tasty blues vibe sprinkled throughout, all courtesy of Ry, which makes the entire soundtrack a great listen.
But the money tune is from this scene, when Ralph finally hits rock bottom (a woman seems to be involved) and finds the blues. The actual scene edits out about a third of the song, so here’s the full recording too:
Sam used to soundcheck with this song for awhile when we were on tour and it went down smooth every time. It wasn’t until a bit later that I learned of his fortuitous discovery of Mr Cooder at a young age and as a byproduct of generalized Macchio fandom.
Luckily, when this revelation surfaced, he also turned me on to the climax scene of the film, in which Karate Kid steps on stage in the juke joint for a deul with The Devil, played by none-other-than Steve Vai. I’m not actually sure if young Sam was obsessed with Steve Vai at this point yet or not, but that came on later too. I won’t spoil the ending, but I’ll encourage you all to grab a comfy chair and settle in for six minutes of classic 80’s cinema, accompanied by one of the best shredding guitar players on the planet cutting heads with one of the most tasteful and groovy guitar players on the planet. Macchio vs The Devil. Vai vs Cooder.
When will my kids be old enough to watch this entire movie with me? I can’t wait.
S
PS — SPOILER ALERT:
I heartily disagree with how the guitar duel ends, on a number of levels. On a related note, in the wiki about this movie we learn “The filmmakers shot sad and happy endings and both were tested with audiences; the happy ending was chosen.” That’s not how you make a movie about the blues. I’m just sayin.
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Week 14: Ry lends a helping hand
(June 3rd, 2018)
Ry had appeared on many albums with other people’s names on the front cover over the years, but John Hiatt’s Bring The Family was a different kind of session.
From the album’s Wikipedia page:
The album was recorded in four days after McCabe’s Guitar Shop booker John Chelew convinced Hiatt that these were some of his best songs. Hiatt was recently sober but had burned so many bridges in the music industry he did not think he had a chance of continuing.
The whole wiki page is actually worth a quick read. It’s only 4 paragraphs, but it’s a great story.
Hiatt had contributed songs and backup vocals to a few of Ry’s early 80’s albums but in February 1987, with Hiatt epically down on his luck but with some great songs in hand, Ry and his old buddy Keltner return the favor. They’re both on fire throughout the whole session, playing loose and hot; clearly relaxed and enjoying a low-pressure/high-quality gig. Nick Lowe (who wrote “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace Love and Understanding”, among other things) plays bass and famously took no payment for his contributions so that they could finish the album on its meager budget.
This is one of those albums that I love because it has a true vibe that hangs in the air through each and every song. In this case, it’s literally because they recorded it so quickly that it’s the same four men in the same room on the same instruments with the same mic setup on every single track. The sole exception is a Hiatt solo piano performance, which they didn’t even take the time to overdub any other instruments onto. In fact, there’s are almost no overdubs on the whole thing. But almost every song is great.
It’s really hard to pick a track to feature because so many are classics. In fact, the whole Side A of the record is solid gold, so I’ll just go ahead and mention every song on it (though not in order): “Have A Little Faith In Me” and “Thing Called Love” have become two of Hiatt’s most famous songs, and they’re two of my favorites to be sure. Another shout-out to Sam Wilson, he always said that Ry’s solo on “Lipstick Sunset” is one of the tastiest slide solos ever recorded. The opening track “Memphis in the Meantime” is some bulletproof white-boy boogie with a sentiment that certainly rang true for me more than once during my career in an Americana band. And then we have have “Alone in the Dark”, which is the kind of slow burner that always hits the spot for me, especially when it’s done this well.
Side B has some great stuff too, but those first five songs stand out as truly strong. As I said at the top, Ry has played on dozens of great records (most of Randy Newman’s great 70’s albums come to mind…) and I certainly won’t call out most of them here, but his sound was so central to this one that it felt like it merited mention. I hope you enjoyed the brief detour.
S
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Ry week 15: the end of an era (almost)
(June 11th, 2018)
1987’s Get Rhythm is another of my favorite Ry records. Not quite as good or as distinctive as Paradise & Lunch or Bop Till You Drop, but its probably in third place for me. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the 80’s saw Ry living two parallel lives: one where he delved into old outlaw ballads and civil war marches and delta blues and cosmic cowboy vibes while scoring a half dozen or so feature films, and another where he settled into groove cutting mostly 15–30 year-old pop and R&B tunes with mostly the same group of musicians. Get Rhythm puts a punctuation mark on that second life.
It’s the fourth album in a row with mostly the same band, though it’s probably the most eclectic of the bunch. There’s a fair share from the old pop catalogue (Elvis gets another tune in) but he also reaches back to some of the lost trails and dusty backroads that he explored throughout the 70’s. The title track is drastic reworking of an old Johnny Cash tune, with Flaco’s accordion and Ry’s slide taking turns in the driver’s seat. Later he turns an old Chuck Berry blues stomp in a solo acoustic showcase of slick slidework and fingerpicking.
But my favorite track on the record is one of the two originals. “Going Back To Okinawa” is the kind of bizarro bastard child of a song that made me love Ry so much in the first place.
He takes a simple I IV V chord progression, a bluesy shuffle beat, and a well-worn escapism theme, and somehow he twists it around into something barely recognizable. There’s this instrumental hook that the accordion (and I think fiddle?) play that starts more than half a bar before the top of the form so that you can never quite tell what’s the top and what’s the bottom. Throw in some flawlessly stumbling, upside-down fills by Keltner (my favorite starts around the 2:05 mark) to really confuse you about where the bar starts. And then, on top of all that rhythmic fun, Ry’s slide plays off of the accordion melody with a loose New Orleans jazz feel. They’re sort of playing the same thing, but he improvises around it — sometimes harmonizing, sometimes doubling but a little off the beat — and creates this vibe that is so playful but also dead serious.
That tune distills so much of what I love about Ry’s playing and general approach to music. Taking forms and themes that seem simple and older than time, and twisting them just enough to create some mystery and some space for the musicians to explore some new territory within it. There are a bunch of other great songs this album too, so I definitely recommend checking out the whole thing, but this one was a revelation when I first heard it. And it still goes down smooth.
As I mentioned before, this marks the end of the proper first half of Ry’s career. He didn’t release another album with his name alone on the front cover for almost two decades. But don’t worry, the man stayed busy. For many, at least in my generation, this next era of Ry is when he truly got famous. That story in the coming weeks, but since I can’t quite let go of this era, you’ll get a bonus live track next week. It’s a real good one.
S
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In the 16th week of Ry, you get a live 80’s bonus track
(June 17th, 2018)
As I eluded to last week, 1987’s Get Rhythm marked the end of a second era of classic Ry, being the last album from his particularly hot 80’s band featuring Keltner and Flaco and Bobby King, etc. Going forward, after making another brief Hiatt-related detour next week, we’ll be in new territory.
But I couldn’t give up on this era quite so easily. In 1987, Ry recorded a live set in Santa Cruz with this band and boy is it hot. It was slated as a VHS release, but Ry nixed it for some reason and so it only ever came out in Japan (and maybe also parts of Europe?). Luckily, through the magic of YouTube, we have the whole thing.
In the intro (which I actually can’t seem to find anymore…) he gives a great little manifesto about constructing what he calls “the master orchestra; a folk music Duke Ellington band.” He goes on to talk about how, when you get musicians this talented together, “you don’t so much have to rehearse, you just have to get used to each other…” which is just a fantastic way to think about playing music.
I’ll give you the opening track here, which also happens to be the closer off of last week’s album, just as a taste:
I highly recommend heading over to YouTube and searching “Ry Cooder Live Santa Cruz 1987” to check out the rest of it. Real nice stuff across the board, especially when you keep Ry’s manifesto in mind and just soak up the vibe and the looseness and the pure and simple musicianship that simply oozes from these dudes.
Enjoy it, and then prepare to move forward in the coming month or so.
S
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Ry gets together with some old friends for Week 17
(June 26th, 2018)
This is sort of a transition week between what we’ve known of Ry in the past and what he will some become. After mysteriously disappearing from the public eye for several years, Ry reunited with the same crew that was first convened to cut John Hiatt’s Bring The Family several years back. This time they formed a band and called it Little Village. As wikipedia succinctly summarizes their career: “The band, a supergroup comprising Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, Nick Lowe, and Jim Keltner, released the album, went on a tour of the US and Europe to support it, and disbanded the year of its release.”
And there you have it. Several critics I’ve read have said somewhat negative things about this record, along the lines of “less than the sum of its parts” although to be fair, its parts are substantial. But the opinions I trust most on this subject are those of Mr D Brock Green and Mr James Vitt (respected attorneys at law and authorities on all things related to white boy boogie music).
My dad and Jim both played this album till it wore out when I was young and I still have an abiding love for it. I think supergroups are inherently a bad idea, but since none of these guys were actually stars in any conventional sense, what we get is a document of four great musicians enjoying themselves.
I’ll give you two tracks off this one, the first being the only one on the record where Ry takes the lead vocal.
This tune has such a wonderfully slinky, loose groove it. I would say Keltner and Cooder should have put a trademark on this kind of pocket but no one else can replicate it anyway so there’s really no need.
And I also want to included “Do You Want My Job” which always hit me in a special way for some reason. It’s nice little fake Caribbean tune about how wonderful it is to be in the islands, unless of course you actually have to make a living there.
The title (and chorus) are the implied question on the lips of every native islander whenever some pink-skinned tourist gets lost in reverie about how great it would be to rip up their plane ticket and never head home.
Speaking of plane tickets, next week Ry gets his passport stamped and heads abroad. He stayed there (in spirit at least) for the better part of a decade.
S
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