Ry Cooder

Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder playing slide guitar in 2009 Photo: Dani Canto
Background information
Birth name	Ryland Peter Cooder
Genres	Americana, roots rock, folk, blues, Tex-Mex, country, gospel, world music
Occupation(s)	Musician, songwriter, film scorer, record producer, instructor
Instrument(s)	Guitar, mandolin, vocals, array mbira
Years active	1967–present
Labels	Warner Bros. Records Nonesuch/Elektra Records
Website	Ry Cooder

Ryland "Ry" Peter Cooder (born 15 March 1947) is a US guitarist, singer and composer.

He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in blues-rock, roots music from his native North America, and, more recently, for his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.

Cooder's solo work has been an eclectic mix, taking in dust bowl folk, blues, Tex-Mex, soul, gospel, rock, and much else. He has collaborated with many important musicians, including The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Earl Hines, Little Feat, Captain Beefheart, The Chieftains, John Lee Hooker, Pops, Mavis Staples, Gabby Pahinui, Flaco Jiménez, Ibrahim Ferrer (Buena Vista Social Club), Freddy Fender and Ali Farka Touré. He formed the Little Village supergroup with Nick Lowe, John Hiatt, and Jim Keltner.

Cooder was ranked 8th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." A 2010 ranking by Gibson placed him at #32.

Career

1960s

During the 1960s, Cooder briefly attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Cooder first attracted attention in the 1960s, playing with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, after previously having worked with Taj Mahal and Ed Cassidy in the Rising Sons. He also played with Randy Newman at this time, including on 12 Songs and possibly Newman's first album, Randy Newman. Van Dyke Parks worked with Newman and then with Cooder during the 60s. Parks arranged Cooder's "One Meatball" according to Parks' 1984 interview by Bob Claster. Van Dyke Parks also collaborated with Lowell George of Little Feat.

Cooder was a guest session musician on various recording sessions with the Rolling Stones in 1968 and 1969, and his contributions appear on the Stones' Let It Bleed (mandolin on "Love in Vain"), and Sticky Fingers, on which he contributed the slide guitar on "Sister Morphine". During this period, Cooder joined with Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, and longtime Rolling Stones sideman Nicky Hopkins to record "Jamming with Edward". Cooder also played slide guitar for the 1970 movie Performance, which contained Mick Jagger's first solo single, "Memo from Turner". The 1975 Rolling Stones compilation album Metamorphosis features an uncredited Cooder on Bill Wyman's "Downtown Suzie", which is also the first Rolling Stones song played and recorded in the open G tuning. Ry Cooder also collaborated extensively with long time friend and like minded individual, Lowell George of Little Feat. Cooder can be heard on the original version of Little Feat's "Willin'." Playing slide guitar on that track after Lowell cut his finger whilst making model airplanes.

1970s

Throughout the 1970s, Cooder released a series of Warner Bros. Records albums that showcased his guitar work. Cooder, like a musicologist or treasure hunter, explored bygone musical genres and found great old-time recordings which he then, as a musician, personalized with sensitive, updated reworkings. Thus, on his breakthrough album, Into the Purple Valley, he chose unusual instrumentations and performed his own arrangements of old Black blues and gospel songs, a Calypso, white country music songs (giving a tempo change to the cowboy ballad, "Billy the Kid"), and — to open the album — a protest song, "How Can You Keep on Moving (Unless You Migrate Too)" by Agnes "Sis" Cunningham about the Okies who were not welcomed with open arms when they migrated to escape the Dust Bowl in the 1930s — to which he gave a rousing-yet-satirical march accompaniment. Cooder's later '70s albums (with the exception of Jazz) do not fall under a single genre description, but — to generalize broadly — it might be fair to call Cooder's self-titled first album blues; Into the Purple Valley, Boomer's Story, and Paradise and Lunch, folk and blues; Chicken Skin Music and Showtime, a unique melange of Tex-Mex and Hawaiian; Jazz, 1920s jazz; Bop Till You Drop, '50's R&B; and Borderline and Get Rhythm, eclectic rock-based excursions. Cooder's 1979 album Bop Till You Drop was the first popular music album to be recorded digitally. It yielded his biggest hit, an R&B cover version of Elvis Presley's 1960s recording "Little Sister" ^[1]. Ry Cooder is credited on Van Morrison's 1979 album, Into the Music, for slide guitar on the song "Full Force Gale". Cooder also played guitar on Judy Collins 1970 concert tour, and is also featured on the 1971 live album recorded during that tour: Living.

1980s

Cooder has worked as a studio musician and has also scored many film soundtracks including Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas (1984). Cooder based this soundtrack and title song "Paris, Texas" on Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)", which he described as "The most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music." "Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)" was also the basis for Cooder's song "Powis Square" for the movie Performance. His other film work includes Walter Hill's The Long Riders (1980), Southern Comfort (1981), Brewster's Millions (1985), Last Man Standing (1996), Hill's Trespass (1992) and Mike Nichols' Primary Colors (1998). Cooder dubbed all slide guitar parts in the 1986 film Crossroads, a take on the blues legend, Robert Johnson. In 1988, Cooder produced the album by his longtime backing vocalists Bobby King and Terry Evans on Rounder Records titled Live and Let Live. He contributed his slide guitar work to every track. He also plays extensively on their 1990 self-produced Rounder release Rhythm, Blues, Soul & Grooves.

1990s

In the early 1990s Cooder collaborated on two world music "crossover" albums, which blended the traditional American musical genres that Cooder has championed throughout his career with the contemporary improvised music of India and Africa. For A Meeting by the River (1993), which also featured his son Joachim on percussion, he teamed with Hindustani classical musician V.M. Bhatt, a virtuoso of the Mohan Veena, a modified 20-string archtop guitar of Bhatt's own invention. In 1995 he teamed with African multi-instrumentalist Ali Farka Toure on the album Talking Timbuktu, which he also produced; the album also featured longtime Cooder collaborator Jim Keltner on drums, veteran blues guitarist Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, jazz bassist John Patitucci and African percussionists and musicians including Hamma Sankare and Oumar Toure. Both albums won the Grammy Award for 'Best World Music Album' in 1994 and 1995 respectively. Cooder also worked with Tuvan throat singers for the score to the 1993 film Geronimo: An American Legend.

In 1995 he performed in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True, a musical performance of the popular story at Lincoln Center to benefit the Children's Defense Fund. The performance was originally broadcast on Turner Network Television (TNT), and issued on CD and video in 1996.

In the late 1990s Cooder played a significant role in the increased appreciation of traditional Cuban music, due to his collaboration as producer of the Buena Vista Social Club (1997) recording, which became a worldwide hit and revived the careers of some of the greatest surviving exponents of 20th century Cuban music. Wim Wenders, who had previously directed 1984's Paris Texas, directed a documentary film of the musicians involved, Buena Vista Social Club (1999) which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000.

2000s

His 2005 album Chávez Ravine was touted by his record label as being "a post-World War II-era American narrative of 'cool cats', radios, UFO sightings, J. Edgar Hoover, red scares, and baseball" — the record is a tribute to the long-gone Los Angeles Latino enclave known as Chávez Ravine. Using real and imagined historical characters, Cooder and friends created an album that recollects various aspects of the poor but vibrant hillside Chicano community which no longer exists. Cooder says, "Here is some music for a place you don’t know, up a road you don’t go. Chávez Ravine, where the sidewalk ends." Drawing from the various musical strains of Los Angeles, including conjunto, corrido, R&B, Latin pop, and jazz, Cooder and friends conjure the ghosts of Chávez Ravine and Los Angeles at mid-century. On this fifteen-track album, sung in Spanish and English, Cooder is joined by East L.A. legends like Chicano music patriarch Lalo Guerrero, Pachuco boogie king Don Tosti, Thee Midniters front man Little Willie G, and Ersi Arvizu, of The Sisters and El Chicano.

His next record was released in 2007. Entitled My Name Is Buddy, it tells the story of Buddy Red Cat, who travels and sees the world in the company of his like-minded friends, Lefty Mouse and Rev. Tom Toad. The entire recording is a parable of the working class progressivism of the first half of the American 20th Century, and even has a song featuring executed unionist Joe Hill. My Name Is Buddy was accompanied by a booklet featuring a story and illustration (by Vincent Valdez) for each track, providing additional context to Buddy's adventures.

Cooder produced and performed on an album for Mavis Staples entitled We'll Never Turn Back, which was released on April 24, 2007. The concept album focused on Gospel songs of the civil rights movement and also included two new original songs by Cooder.

Ry Cooder's I, Flathead was released on June 24, 2008. It is the completion of his California trilogy. Based on the drag racing culture of the early '60s, it is set on the desert salt flats in southern California. The disc was released as a deluxe edition as well with stories written by Mr. Cooder to accompany the music.

In late 2009, Cooder toured Japan, New Zealand and Australia with Nick Lowe, performing some of Lowe's songs and a selection of Cooder's own material, mainly from the 1970s. Joaquin Cooder provided percussion, and Juliette Commagere and Alex Lilly contributed backing vocals.

The song "Diaraby", which Cooder recorded with Ali Farka Touré, is used as the theme to "The World's" Geoquiz. The World is a radio show distributed by Public Radio International.

In 2009, Cooder performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States”. Cooder performed with Bob Dylan and Van Dyke Parks on the documentary broadcast on Dec. 13, 2009 on the History Channel. They played "Do Re Mi" and reportedly a couple of other Guthrie songs that were excluded from the final edit. He also travelled with the band Los Tigres del Norte and recorded the 2010 album San Patricio with the Chieftains, Lila Downs, Liam Neeson, Linda Ronstadt, Van Dyke Parks, Los Cenzontles, and Los Tigres.

2010s

In June 2010, responding to the passage of Arizona SB 1070, he released the single "Quicksand", which tells the story of Mexicans attempting to emigrate to Arizona through the desert. Cooder has announced a new album, "Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down" to be released in Summer 2011. Contains politically charged songs such as "No Banker Left Behind" which was inspired by a Robert Scheer column.

Awards

• 1988 Grammy Award – Pecos Bill (Rabbit Ears Productions)
• 1993 Grammy Award – Meeting by the River
• 1995 Grammy Award – Talking Timbuktu with Ali Farka Toure
• 1998 Grammy Award – Buena Vista Social Club
• 2000 – Ry Cooder received an honorary doctorate from Queen's University
• 2001 - Ry Cooder received an honorary doctorate from California Institute of the Arts
• 2003 – Rolling Stone magazine named Ry Cooder the 8th Greatest Guitarist of All Time in their "100 Greatest Guitarists" list, p. 8

Discography

Solo LPs/CDs

• Ry Cooder (December 1970)
• Into the Purple Valley (February 1972)
• Boomer's Story (November 1972)
• Paradise and Lunch (May 1974)
• Chicken Skin Music (October 1976)
• Showtime (August 1977)
• Jazz (June 1978)
• Bop Till You Drop (August 1979)
• Borderline (October 1980)
• The Slide Area (April 1982)
• Get Rhythm (November 1987)
• Chávez Ravine (May 2005)
• My Name Is Buddy (March 2007)
• I, Flathead (June 2008)
• Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down (July 2011)

Compilations

• Why Don't You Try Me Tonight (1986)
• River Rescue - The Very Best Of Ry Cooder (1994)
• Music by Ry Cooder (1995) (2 disc set of film music)
• The Ry Cooder Anthology: The UFO Has Landed (October 2008)

Collaborations

• Rising Sons featuring Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder (recorded 1965/66, released 1992)
• Little Village (1992)
• A Meeting by the River (1993) (with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt)
• Talking Timbuktu (1994) (with Ali Farka Touré)
• Buena Vista Social Club (September 1997)
• Hollow Bamboo with Jon Hassell and Ronu Majumdar (bansuri) (2000)
• Mambo Sinuendo (January 2003) (with Manuel Galbán)
• San Patricio (March 2010) (with The Chieftains)

Soundtracks

• Performance (1970)
• The Long Riders (June 1980)
• Southern Comfort (1981)
• The Border (1982)
• Paris, Texas (February 1985)
• Music from Alamo Bay (August 1985)
• Blue City (July 1986)
• Crossroads (July 1986)
• Cocktail (1988)
• Johnny Handsome (October 1989)
• Trespass (January 1993)
• Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)
• Last Man Standing (1996)
• The End of Violence (1997)
• Primary Colors (1998)

Performs on:

• Safe as Milk (1967) with Captain Beefheart
• Neil Young (album) (1968) with Neil Young
• The Candlestickmaker (1970) with Ron Elliott
• Washington County (1970) with Arlo Guthrie
• Living (1971) with Judy Collins
• Money and Cigarettes (February 1983) with Eric Clapton
• "Bring the Family" (1987) with John Hiatt
• Live and Let Live (1988) with Bobby King & Terry Evans
• King Cake Party (1994) with The Zydeco Party Band

Written Works

• Los Angeles Stories (City Lights Publishers, 2011)

External links

• Ry Cooder (Nonesuch Records)
• Easy Guitar Chords Homepage
• The People Speak at IMDb
• http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/12/entertainment/la-et-people-speak12-2009dec12