Ry Cooder Part 3: A Lengthy (and Classy) Victory Lap
(for context: the introduction)
Ry Week 25: Coming Home
(September 15th, 2018)
We took a nice long break (about twice our normal week) to cleanse the palette from Ry’s renown globe-trotting middle period and prepare ourselves for the final chapter of this extended saga. As is fitting for the third and final chapter of such an epic journey, our hero comes home.
In 2005, Ry released Chavez Ravine; his first solo album in 18 years, and the first of what would become known as “The California Trilogy.” These three albums are a distinctly weird love letter to his home turf. Each is a loose concept album set in Southern California. To be honest, Chavez Ravine is the only one I’ve really spent any time with, so I’m kinda looking forward to getting acquainted with the other two.
But first thing’s first: Chavez Ravine has the distinction of being the only Ry solo record that I bought when it came out. Really a matter of chance more than anything, I was in college and had recently passed through my Buena Vista love affair and settled into a deep fascination with Paradise & Lunch and some of Ry’s other early records. I must confess I didn’t really understand this album when I first listened to it. In fact, only now does it really make any sense to me.
In my defense, it’s a pretty fucking weird record. It, perhaps more than any other, hits the bullseye that Ry is almost always aiming for: creating some bizarro genre that never existed; steeped in some deep tradition, but exploring the outer edges and obscure cross-currents.
Ry was born in Los Angeles in 1947 and lived around Santa Monica for his entire young life (and much of the rest of it, in between his near-constant touring and recording). This record can essentially be thought of as a tribute to the wild world that he heard on the radio in 1950’s LA. To a pre-teen white guitarist from near the beach, the barrios of East LA must’ve seemed like another universe, and yet strangely immediate. Ry makes a point on this album to feature both Little Willie G (of Thee Midniters) and Lalo Guerrero (considered by Wikipedia to be “the father of Chicano music”) as well as a host of other Chicano musicians, not to mention name-checking a number of others who probably seemed like the brightest stars in the sky to a young boy with his ear glued to the local radio from across town. In this sense, it is a very obvious continuation of the Buena Vista-esque work from his past decade. But it’s also very different.
This is truly a concept album. It tells the story of Chavez Ravine, a largely Hispanic neighborhood in north central LA that was bulldozed in the 50’s to make room for public housing that was never built. In 1962 what was left was cleared away to make room for the new Dodger Stadium. That’s the basic “plot line” but the songs are mostly just character sketches from that world, plus a vague subplot involving UFO’s and Communists.
Musically, this record is all over the place too, but there are a few tracks that really jumped out, even to my 21-year old self.
The opener “Poor Man’s Shangri-La” is the best example. I still don’t really know what genre this is, but it always struck a chord with me. Even listening back to it now: the vibe is great, the chorus is great, the drumming (Keltner is back!) is spectacular, and those weird suspended vocal harmonies over the outro are just awesome.
On this recent listen, I also appreciated just how truly out there tracks like “Don’t Call Me Red” are. And I also wanna call out “Chinito Chinito” which kinda went over my head as a younger man, but has some real vibe and a real strong father-son guitar-drums duel that Ry and Joachim get into on the outro section. The last track, “Soy Luz y Sombra” is lovely too.
Overall, I actually feel like the whole thing is a really interesting and well-crafted piece, up through track 10. “El UFO Cayo” is a classic closer and then “It’s Just Work For Me” is the perfect tragically banal post-script.
But then there are 5 more tracks. And they aren’t bad! But they’re a bit unfocused, which is unfortunate because it makes an album that is legitimately ambitious — and thematically casts a pretty wide net — into something that feels a bit thrown together. It feels to me like Ry had too much fun making this thing and crafted a really cool concise story, but then couldn’t bear to throw away the B-roll.
That’s just my take, but I do heartily recommend taking the time to listen through track 10. I intentionally didn’t include many individual links in here so that you would instead consider checking out the full thing in sequence.
And try to do it when you can pay attention, or at least hear it well. I made the mistake many times over the years of putting this on as background music and it just sounds straight-up weird and you totally miss the conceptual threads that tie the whole thing together. (If you’re looking for some Ry background music, let me refer you back to Mambo Sinuendo from several weeks ago. Perfection.)
That’s it for this week. Next week we get a full record from the perspective of a cat.
Welcome Back!
S
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Ry Week 26: Back On That Ol’ Dusty Trail
(September 30th, 2018)
We arrive now at the middle chapter of the California Trilogy. 2007’s My Name Is Buddy is essentially a lost Steinbeck novel, told through the eyes of a stray red cat named… Buddy. The scenery is smalltown Southern California in the early-to-mid 20th Century. The liner notes on the record invite us to “journey through time and space in days of labor, big bosses, farm failures, strikes, company cops, sundown towns, hobos, and trains… the America of yesteryear.”
Unsurprisingly, this record has a strong Woody Guthrie influence. In case you think Ry may have just discovered ol’ Woody, let me remind you of that fateful day roughly six months ago when we began this journey together, with me introducing my first pick: “…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.” That song with Woody’s “Do Re Mi” which pretty much condenses about half the tunes on this record into its three short verses.
But there’s more than just a deep dive into Woody’s world on this record, at least musically speaking. Ry enlists folk legend Mike Seeger to play on about 2/3rds of the tracks mostly banjo and harmonica, but a few other treats too. Mike deserves a brief bio here: For one thing, he is Pete’s brother, and did most everything his brother did, but a little less famously. For another, in Bob Dylan’s “autobiography” he says he decided to become a songwriter after seeing Mike Seeger playing at party and realizing no one could ever be as good at singing old folk songs as Mike was so he might as well do something else. For one more thing, Mike lived in Central Virginia for a long time later in life. My mother-in-law Patti was even invited to his wedding! I think my favorite Mike feature on this record is the harp on “Strike!” but there are a lot of good ones.
The album also features Van Dyke Parks heavily on the piano. Van Dyke is an interesting character in his own right. He produced a bunch of off-beat classic rock throughout the 70’s and played piano with Ry (including on the 1987’s Live in Santa Cruz show that I’ve referenced many times) and a ton of others over the years. Our featured track this week, “Cat and Mouse”, is a Ry and Van Dyke duet:
It features some great playing, but also my favorite lyric on the album: “Just because you were told a story back in your hometown, don’t have to mean that story’s always true.” This record is unique for Ry in that he wrote (or co-wrote) every song on it. It doesn’t take long for him to peel back the metaphor on this “Cat and Mouse” story. His essential point is that there’s no more terrifying nightmare for rich folks than the idea of poor folks finding common cause with each other. The Republican Party has been singing this song for decades, and if they ever stop convincing poor white people that they have more in common with rich white people than they do with poor people of color, well then I guess we’ll all wave goodbye to the Republican Party. Sorry if that gets a little too political for ya, but it’s less political than Ry gets all over this album.* He just sets it all 60 years ago so it’s easier to swallow.
The whole record isn’t as folky as I’ve made it out to be. There are some tasty Stones-y rockers on there (“Sundown Town” is my favorite) and a couple wierdo vibey things too about green dogs flying through the desert at night and shit like that. But on the whole, this is the perfect record for you if you miss the days when Ry was digging in dusty soil with a mandolin on his back in the early 70's.
Next week we get part 3. All I know about it is that it’s set in SoCal and it’s about drag racing in the desert. Yee haw.
S
* — my favorite political allegory on this record is “Dying Truck Driver” which is a story about a truck driver, that Buddy finds dying on the side of the highway, who has been struck down by a waitress who poisons her pies at the diner up the highway. Only in the last verse do you realize this is a metaphor for capitalists who tell workers that, if they want to enjoy the spoils and comforts of industry, they’ll have to give up some of their labor rights to make the economy thrive. Classic stuff.
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Ry Week 27: a disappointing final chapter
(October 14, 2018)
Don’t worry, this isn’t the end of the whole sage, just the third and final record in “The California Trilogy”. If you haven’t been paying attention, Ry followed his extended Cuban period with a trio of concept albums set in mid-20th Century Southern California. In week 25 we featured the under-appreciated gem Chavez Ravine, and in week 26 we travelled with hobos and labor activists (and Mike Seeger in the sidecar) for My Name Is Buddy.
Unfortunately, 2008’s I, Flathead is kinda a Return of the Jedi for those of you Ewok-haters out there.* The album tells the story of Kash Buk, a burnt out country singer who drag races in the SoCal desert, whenever he can scrape together enough cash and/or credit at a local engine shop to fix his busted up pride and joy. Musically it’s mostly a tribute to Johnny Cash and Buck Owens and Merle and all the others who remind us that California is the biggest agricultural state in the nation.
Maybe it’s just where I’m at right now, but a faux honky-tonk tribute to some romanticized tragic hero from rural America didn’t hit the spot for me. I’ve heard my fair share of those records over the years and, aside from the ones that say “Drive-By Truckers” on the cover, most of them bored me the first time around. Not to mention, attempting to put subjectivity aside, this just isn’t one of Ry’s strongest efforts.
The opening track is one of the best and (perhaps not coincidentally) one of the least faux honky-ton of the bunch. It’s a ballad for those perennial losers who seem to always get kicked around by the world, and always manage to blame it on someone or something other than themselves. Ry has a particular soft spot for this character; he shows up throughout his extensive catalog (see “Always Lift Him Up” off 1976’s Chicken Skin Music for my favorite example). This whole record is more or less for that guy.
Alright then, I won’t waste too much ink on a record I’ve already confessed to not liking. Next week Ry steps back behind the producer’s desk and the legendary Ms Mavis Staples steps up to the mic.
Until then, enjoy the desert.
S
* — I’m actually not one of these Ewok-haters. I loved Return of the Jedi as a kid and frankly, I’ll still stand by it.
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Ry Week 28: We’ll be rested, when the roll is called
(October 29th, 2018)
I’ve been a bit slack recently — I think this last “week” was about 15 days — but I’ll try to make up for speed with quality.
This week we drop back to 2007 and join the great Mavis Staples on her righteous journey through this weary world. Through one lense, We’ll Never Turn Back can be seen as yet another in the formidable series of records where Ry teams up some aging legend from one of those brilliant fringe genres that thrive in the fecund ground on the border of “pop” music and “folk” music. In this case, we turn to Civil Rights-era American Gospel, and what rich ground it is. But when we step back from that lense and take this album on it’s own, we see what it really is: a musical memoir from someone who played a bit part in a powerfully dramatic moment in our human history.
Mavis’ music, originally with her family’s famous group, has always been vitally connected to The Movement. She was close family friends with the Reverend Doctor himself and the family’s music was as much about justice as it was about Jesus. Miss Mavis has travelled many roads since that time, but here Ry helps here construct a potent retrospective on that formative era; one that casts it into the future by tying it to the continuing struggle of the next generation.*
“I’ll Be Rested” is my favorite song on the record, perhaps because it most explicitly makes this point. It’s also the only one credited as a Cooder/Staples co-write (most of the album are reworkings of classic Civil Rights Gospel numbers). Beyond that, it’s just a musically remarkable track.
The song thematically reminds me of this Kanye and Frank Ocean collaboration — although the Mavis song was 4 years earlier — calling out names of departed loved ones who fell in the struggle. Furthermore, the track itself reminds me more of something Kanye might have put together (especially that high piano riff that loops throughout) than a typical Ry Cooder production. There are plenty of great tracks on this album that have that classic loose Cooder feel, rooted in the muddy delta and swaggering like a hot Hollywood night. My favorite happens to be “We Shall Not Be Moved” but there are plenty others. “I’ll Be Rested” on the other hand, feels like a track. An intentionally and carefully constructed track, with parts that are as spare and minimal as they are powerful. In this way, Ry may have finally learned something from Hip Hop, something he’s been trying (and mostly failing) to do since the early 80's.
I won’t say too much more about this album, except that I highly recommend it. We don’t have too many weeks left on this journey and I hope I’m not spoiling anything when I tell you this might be the best one we have left. Only time will tell, but the train should finally be pulling into the station just about the time we welcome in the new year.
Until the next,
S
* — the video I linked here features an extremely powerful visual chronicle of this connection. I don’t know who made it but I applaud them, and not least for their choice of soundtrack.
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Ry Week 29: Ry Wants You To Go VOTE!
(November 6th, 2018)
If I had managed to write about Ry and Mavis in less than two weeks, we’d be right on schedule! As it stands, we won’t get to Election Special, Ry’s personal effort to tilt the 2012 Obama/Romney election, until next week. Still, I feel compelled to urge you all to make it to the polls today. The stakes are high. I could list all the issues that are near and dear to my heart, but you gotta take your own heart to the polls, not mine. I will say, to any of you who are feeling generally disgusted by politics and wondering what the point of participating is, that the candidates only have to impress the people who they think will vote. If you want politicians to respect your values, then you have to be one of those people.
So go vote. And I might as well say it, because Ry would say it too: vote for a Democrat. The Democratic Party has a lot of shit they need to figure out, but it’s my firmly held belief that they are currently on the right side of history. I haven’t even listened to Election Special, but judging from this week’s selection — 2011’s Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down — Ry more or less feels the same way.
Ry has certainly gotten political before, but this album is a very explicit response to the State of the Union in the late 00’s, most specifically the financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession.
The opening track lays it out there for all to hear in a straight-up-the-middle Guthrie-style broadside. It’s the best song on the record, to my ears at least, and certainly at the spiritual center of the thing. Musically, it’s a funky little march that swings like old Levon used to, propelled by mandolin and snare drum dancing back and forth all over and around each other.
I should take a moment here to call out Joachim Cooder for the fine work he’s done over the past few decades. We first met Ry’s son Joachim as the teenage percussionist who followed his dad around the world in the 90’s and got his name on the back of some records with some real global legends.
But in the post-Buena Vista world, Joachim took a more central role, eventually becoming his father’s primary collaborator on most of the California Trilogy, and all the albums afterwards. I called out his work on Chavez Ravine already, but his drumming throughout this record is fantastic too, particularly on this first track. He’s said many times that Keltner was his inspiration and his primary teacher and you can hear that he learned well. I’ll also note that Joachim co-produced three songs (not coincidentally, the three most modern-sounding songs) on the Mavis Staples album, and specifically that he produced “I’ll Be Rested” which I featured last week. I won’t repeat my effusive praise for that track here, but I urge you to go back and check that one out if you missed it.
The rest of the album explores the musical territory charted out in the California Trilogy. Tasty stuff and more good nutrition for those of us who enjoy offbeat takes on blues and folky country and boogie and a few weird atmospheric groove pieces for thrown in for flavor. And the lyrics, though they get a little clunky and heavy-handed here and there, make a passionate point throughout.
Alright then. Here’s hoping America doesn’t let itself down today and we can approach Election Special next week with a pleasant nostalgia for the days when catching Mitt Romney on video saying 47% of the population are government leaches was a scandal, instead of a sour mouth full of fresh burning vitriol for the ugly reality of the modern American Dream.
We’ll know soon enough.
S
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Ry week 30: Ry Stumps for Obama
(November 26th, 2018)
I previewed this one a little bit last week (let’s be honest, I slacked again: it’s been more than a week) but I still haven’t actually given you a tune from it. Hot on the heels of Ry’s most explicitly political record yet… he got even more political! 2012’s Election Special was released less than two months before the Obama v. Romney election. Ry made no secret about the themes or goals of this record: elect Democrats.
Both thematically and musically, it’s fairly indistinguishable from 2011’s Pull Up Some Dust and to my ears not quite as consistent. You can’t fault the man for wanting to be timely though. A topical record isn’t much good if it comes out after the topic is no longer relevant.
My favorite track is this vibey mandolin ballad about one of the Koch Brothers getting whisked off to Hell in the dark of night to finally fulfill the deal which they long ago had struck with the Devil.
It’s probably the least knock-you-over-the-head lyrically of any tune on the album, which is probably what makes it refreshing. That said, he doesn’t exactly bury the lead, even here.
We’ve almost reached the end of our journey. Following this record, Ry did a live one (which I’ll skip, although it’s certainly a nice listen) and then took some much deserved time off until earlier this year. As promised, we’ll be putting a bow on this thing just in time for the new year, maybe even with some time to spare.
I should also mention that the full playlist with all the songs I’ve featured is updated for your listening pleasure and can be found here.
I gave it a listen a few weeks back and it still goes down smooth.
Over and out,
S
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Ry Week 31: Ry arrives in the present, looking to the past
(December 6th, 2018)
This was actually a very refreshing way to end our journey; a bit like getting to the end of a much-too-large meal and expecting a thick slice of mediocre chocolate cake, but instead being served nice little bowl of lime gelato. 2018’s Prodigal Son is Ry’s most recent album and it certainly has some bite and some tanginess. But it feels lighter and less ponderous than his previous few. Six years have passed since his last release, Election Special, came out in 2012. All of Obama’s second term and the first half of Trump. I wouldn’t say Ry has softened his edge, but he’s at least gotten a bit less literal.
Prodigal Son is also a great way to end our journey because it completes the circle a bit. Its feel is more like a Ry album from the 70’s. The sound is more modern (or at least it sounds like more modern Ry records) but the approach is much closer to Boomer’s Story or Purple Valley than it is to Election Special. Early on in this extended diatribe, I pointed out the obvious: that Ry is not particularly notable as a songwriter, but that he has a special gift for combining archeology with interpretation. I stand by that assessment. However, it is a rare artist who spends the first few decades of his career interpreting others’ material, and then begins writing full albums of original material as he begins getting AARP ads in his mailbox.
The majority of Ry’s post-Buena Vista work has been heavy on original songs (many co-written with his son Joachim). I enjoy a lot of these albums, but I’ll concede that Ry’s lyricism can be a little heavy-handed. He tends to catch an idea, aim right at it, and then hit the nail directly on the head. What was refreshing about Prodigal Son is that my thought, on first listen, was “he’s really improved as a lyricist.” Because — while in reality he’s just returned to the song-mining of his younger albums — he picks tunes that sound like better versions of the songs he’s been writing for the past decade and a half. And, as was always his specialty, he plays them like he owns them.
There are still some original tunes on here (“Gentrification”, calling out Google for buying up and evicting poor neighborhood’s to make room for coffee shops and gyms, is a great example of what I describe in the first half of the previous paragraph), but I’m going to focus on the old tunes he resurrects.
On first listen “You Must Onload” was one of those that I thought Ry had written recently and I was getting ready to compliment his improved songcraft. It felt to me like great tune from an archetypal Atheist-Baby-Boomer-who-loves-old-Gospel. Then I looked at the liner notes and realized this song is almost 100 years old. It was written by Blind Alfred Reed, most definitely not and atheist, and recorded at the legendary Bristol Sessions in 1927 in Bristol, Virginia.
For those who don’t know (this included me before I went down an extended Wikipedia wormhole on my phones while lying in bed last night), the Bristol Sessions are “considered by some as the ‘Big Bang’ of modern country music.” And by “modern” here, they mean “since the invention of recorded music.” To make long story quite short, recorded music was just beginning to have a real commercial market in the 1920’s and the million-selling “Wreck of the Old ‘97” in 1924 gave some companies the idea that maybe there was a market for the “Southern” or “hillbilly” sound. In 1927 Ralph Peer, working for the Victor Talking Machine Company (who was primarily in the business of selling Vitrola record players), went on a scouting mission in the South. Having visited Atlanta a few years before, this time he stopped in Charleston and Charlotte, and then made his way to the heart of Appalachia, setting up shop in Bristol for two weeks to finish his trip.
Bristol sits on the Virginia/Tennessee border and was, at the time, probably the biggest city truly in Appalachia. Peer set up a recording studio in a local hat factory and offered $50 per song plus 2½ cents royalty on each record sold, with the intention of getting those mythical mountain music legends to literally come out of the hills and step in front of his microphone.
It worked. Most notably, Peer made the first recordings of both Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family, who quickly became two of the biggest stars of the first 30 years or so of what came to be called Country Music. In his two weeks in Bristol, Peer recorded 76 songs from 19 performers.
One of these was Blind Alfred Reed. Alfred probably comes in a distant third behind Jimmie and The Carters as the most notable discovery from these sessions. But he is quite a character in his own right. Some brief highlights from Wikipedia*: He was born in 1880 in Floyd County, Virginia, the son of a farm laborer. His recording career lasted from 1927 to 1929 (that’s age 47 to 49) and he recorded a grand total of 19 songs. He died in 1956, in West Virginia, reportedly of starvation. This article in the Bristol Herald Courier from 2016 (I love that this is in the local Bristol paper) gives a brief but powerful portrait of the man, including some interviews with his grandson and a Professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee University.
Over the years, Ry has recorded three of the 19 songs that Blind Alfred put down, beginning with “How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?” which Blind Alfred originally recorded in New York City mere weeks after the stock market crash that sent our country into the Great Depression. Ry put it on his debut album and it’s been recorded by more than a dozen others since then, including Springsteen on his excellent Live in Dublin album.** Also, back in late March, I called out Reed’s “Always Lift Him Up” as probably my favorite performance on 1976’s Chicken Skin Music.
Mr Reed was a complicated character. To quote the Professor I mentioned above, “He was fearless in what he talked about…Sometimes he seems very progressive and some-times he was conservative. His world view was a dark view. I think it’s tongue-in-cheek sometimes. His words can be playful. His lyrics are homespun but they’re not clichés.” The man was as fundamental a Christian as ever the played the fiddle, and his lyrics are laced with the pervading, unwavering misogyny that often accompanies that particular brand of fundamentalism. Of his 19 tracks, a full two are about women going to Hell for getting fashionable haircuts. And a good 20–30% of his songs make mention of an “aggrevatin’ wife” somewhere in the lyrics.
But Ol’ Blind Al was also strong for the working man. He is frequently positioned as a precursor for (and inspiration to) Woody Guthrie, who we know Ry has spent some uncounted years idolizing. Our featured song calls out those fashion-lovin’ and money-lovin’ and power-lovin’ Christians who would take a penny out of their poor brother’s pocket at any chance. They ain’t gettin’ in to Heaven with a purse full of those pennies. Not on Blind Alfred’s watch. And not on Ry’s watch either.
And that brings us to the end of the road. Prodigal Son holds the honor of being the only album we’ve discussed that was released since I started writing these missives. I’m gonna send one more next week to wrap things up, partially because I have one more track to share, but mostly because I’m not quite ready to quit yet. Arlo said it best, “I’m not proud… but I’m not tired!”
over and out,
S
* — I gotta do a quick shoutout for Wikipedia. They are the shit. I am consistently baffled by how reliably accurate, well-written, and expansive their content is. They are doing the world a huge favor every day they continue to exist. For one thing, without them I would never be able to take on a project like this and sound so weirdly obsessively knowledgable. At one point I decided that I really wanted to work for them and then I looked into it and realized they have like 7 full-time employees and a shitload of insanely smart and dedicated volunteers. They’re amazing. Also, they’re asking for money right now because they don’t have ads on principle. You should give them some.
** — I would be remiss here if I didn’t mention the New Lost City Ramblers. Ry almost certainly first heard of Blind Alfred Reed from their third album, 1959’s Songs from the Depression. That would’ve been a great title for a Smiths or Mudhoney record thirty years later, but this album was quite literally full of songs written thirty years earlier, during the actual Great Depression. It features “How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?”, as well as “Taxes on the Farmer Feeds Us All” and “How Can You Keep On Moving (Unless You Migrate Too)?” both of which Ry recorded on 1972’s Into The Purple Valley. The Ramblers were Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tom Paley. This is same Mike Seeger who plays on almost every song on Ry’s 2007’s effort My Name Is Buddy. Almost fifty years later, and these two are on a record together.
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