Ry Cooder Work in Progress

Recommendations made by Ry Cooder over the years about his favourite musicians and recordings.
Note that I have yet to establish a structure and method of highlighting album titles etc. Please be patient!

1999

(snip) Cooder's chief inspiration for Buena Vista came from the descargas he had heard on the Estrellas de Areito sessions, recorded by Egrem back in 1979. "That's how I knew about Ruben Gonzalez, although I didn't know if he was still alive. Compay Segundo we also knew about and there were other people we asked for who weren't around. We wanted Tata Guines but he was in Venezuela. I wanted Nino Rivera, the tres player on Estrellas, but he had died. A lot of them were still around, like Cachaito and Amadito Valdes, and I guess that became the core."

(snip) Of the glut of modern Cuban albums, Cooder is most impressed with Y Los Cubanos Postizos by the New York-based guitarist Marc Ribot. "He's unique and that record is a work of genius," he enthuses. "He figured out how to reinterpret Arsenio Rodrigues. I'd have told him he was a fool to try but he did a mighty thing with that record. It's jaw-dropping. I put my money on him. He's the future now. He's shown the way."

(snip) He does, however, still enthuse about Flaco Jimenez and Gabby Pahinui, his partners in crime on 1976's Chicken Skin Music. "I met up with Gabby in Hawaii in the seventies and he was the man. In those days you could go down to the record store in Honolulu and they had all his albums from the fifties and sixties still in print in 12 inch vinyl. I'd never heard anybody play guitar and sing like that. It was a short trip because Hawaii is really little but we got to be friends and I was very lucky. It was unprecedented in my experience because you meet folkloric people and you meet great players but this guy seemed to be able to do everything. I felt the same thing years later when I met Compay Segundo."

(snip) So what's on his turntable at the moment? "Mostly Cuban stuff because there is so much to it. I'm listening to Nino Rivera a lot. Nick Gold found an LP on the street in Havana which I'd never heard. It's got one tune on it with one amazing solo that I've been analysing. It's like teaching yourself in a jazz class, analysing every note, seeing what this guy is up to. I spend a certain amount of time everyday with that on. And I'm listening to this stuff from Monterrey in Mexico. There are two or three records from the fifties from there that are really the most precious thing. They don't sound like Tex Mex, they sound very Cuban. It's bolero music with an accordeon and that duet style of singing. I'm tying to find out who these people were. It's on a home-made label and it pushes your body around in a good way."

(snip) Yet he hasn't totally turned his back on music from the United States. "I'm listening to the pedal steel player Speedy West a lot because I'm trying to get a handle on the instrument. I've got a big old pedal steel, which is like a two engine 1940s Lockheed aircraft. How are you going to fly this thing? It's a three neck, five pedal Bigsby circa 1950 and it's a piece of work. It's like sitting at a table and I don't have the co-ordination for it but I like the sound. Speedy West's stuff is simple but it's got a lot of surprises. It's the same thing I like about Cuban music. Stuff happens. People do things that aren't careful or studied. Speedy was insane - he just did whatever his nervous system was telling him to do. He'd go way out on a limb and you can hear him pulling it off."

(snip) He is also a fan of the new Steve Earle bluegrass album with the Del McCoury Band (fast becoming the favourite record of the year among other musicians when I was in Miami with the Rolling Stones in March, Keith Richards instructed his press officer to get him a copy). "Del McCoury is an authentic guy and Steve Earle is awesome. He's a genius and he's real and nobody can touch him. There are so many songs he's written, any one of which would allow him a place in the pantheon. I love primitive white music and rocking white music but it's pitiful to see what has happened in that area. But there is Steve. He's the last gatekeeper. The torchbearer."

1992

In preparation for our rendezvous with Ry, we assembled a cassette with 10 tracks of killer slide. The selections span from 1929's' 'Roll And Tumble Blues" to late-1950'ss Elmore James. Our source for the Newbern, Weldon. and House tracks was Yazoo's The Roots Of Robert Johnson, while the Waters and Baby Face Leroy sides are from Story Of Blues' The Greatest In Country Blues Vol 3. The Nighthawk piece appears on The Best Of Chess Vol 1. We also used songs from Fred McDowell's Mississippi Delta Blues and Earl Hooker's Two Bugs And A Roach, both on Arhoolie. and Elmore James' Let's Cut It on Flair/Virgin. After the first cut, Ry's comments came down as the songs were playing.

BABY FACE LEFOY, "ROLLIN' AND TUMBLIN', PART 1''

People have suggested that [harmonica player] Little Walter is the greatest blues play on any instrument, and I'm inclined to agree. It's just his time and his touch. The most elegant blues. The rhythm is just awesome. Muddy Waters on slide! He always played the same way: it always sounds the same. Fucking great! Jesus! [turns off tape.] To me, that's an example of somebody who transcends anything we think we know about the guitar. I mean, that could've been a one-string there, a post with a string, any of my guitars - it wouldn't make any difference. The guy's just playing on two strings, like the C and D strings, so that tuning must be G.

When guys play like that you don't feel frets and six strings and a scale length. It's beyond construction and principle. He's playing where he knows those notes are, and they are locking into this spirit thing of playing, the movement of the song. And he goes past the note - the note isn't just here [points to fret] -because there are degrees of the note. It's like Turkish music in some ways - there's 5,000 notes. The great thing about this is it liberates you from those idiotic frets. That's where all those old guys hear that stuff. There are nuances - no phrases come down the same. When you need a lift, you go sharp, and when you need to sour it up and make it feel a little darker, you go flat. But you don't think about it. You just do it.

It is staggering to have that quality of performance on a record, though, knowing what we know. Listen to Sonny Boy Williamson's "Little Village" with Leonard Chess - how do these records ever get made when assholes like that were running the show? It's amazing to me. They made these records under such duress, conditions that ultimately we see all around us today. They talk about slaves singing code songs - it's hardly any different now. But the really amazing thing is that you can get that kind of free expression and excitement and even joy, perhaps, in a while guy's recording studio. It takes a lot of power and amazing strength of personalities. These aren't wimpy guys. Prety heavy-duty characters, and it's coming out. They're just blasting away. We're very lucky this shit got recorded at all. It's a miracle that it did.

[Restarts tape] It's not chord based You don't feel chord in this. It's greater than anything African. This is taken to another planet. This is the beauty of the American music. Listen to those big siring bends - whoa! Slap bass. It's incredible. Nobody in Africa can do that. I mean, as great as African music is, it all comes together in this country.

MUDDY WATERS, "I BE'S TROUBLED"

Cats fighting. An argument. A little cat and a big cat. Mister Microtone. I guess that's what you'd have to say, finally, about Muddy: He's oriental in his approach.

ROBERT NIGHTHAWK, "SWEET BLACK ANGEL"

That sounds like late Tampa Red. Pretty. Standard tuning! When they do certain things, it's because they have to, because they're in standard tuning. They can't grab the next note, so you hear that happening. I bet you that's all on the first and second strings. He can't go down, because he's in standard. His vibrato's so sweet. He's very good, but he's still in standard tuning.

EARL HOOKER, "ANNA LEE"

We have an Elmore fancier here. His reverb is fabulous. Also standard tuning. Yeah, everybody talked about how Earl could play like a madman. Sure like to know what that guitar is. Maybe a Firebird, one of those weird carved Gibsons with the bevelled edges and two cutaways He also had a weird-looking doubleneck. Beautiful reverb sound. Low volume. All this stuff was cut very quiet. It can't sound like that if it's not. No stress, open mike - that means quiet. The biggest mistake is to turn up. Then it all goes away, shrinks into the microphone. This is quiet music. Blues guys are tired [laughs]; they can't play that loud. He used a spark-plug wrench, so I guess that's why he gets that real sleek sound that's so smooth. I don't have any good metal slides. I wish I did. I suspect Elmore had one too. I'll have to get one.

ELMORE JAMES, "DUST MY BLUES"

Now. that's not the Elmore sound. He's amplified, but by something horrible. This isn't his beautiful sound. His beautiful sound is the greatest thing in the world, but only on the Chicago sides for Fire and Enjoy. And the rest of it sounds like this. Even the Fire and Enjoy sides from New Orleans and New York sound like this. He had something else he used on those I don't think it was his [acoustic] Kay with a pickup. Because there's no way a Kay with a pickup can sound like those Chicago sides, like "It Hurts Me Too". It cannot. I've been through everything, and I am sorry - it cannot.

It's important to play through the right stuff - here's a case in point. It's so wonderful, so glorious sounding. It's stringy - the way the top string chokes out. He's the guy. Real late. The phrasing, man, is so laid back. He's so groovy. And how he hits strings sympathetically with his slide around the note is the best. It's the prettiest sound. Ain't no problem memorising what Elmore plays. It's how he doesn't play. The killer shit is what he falls off into. It's not the notes themselves. It's the shit around the notes and just that feeling that's strictly body rhythm.

ELMORE JAMES, "HAWAIIAN BOOGIE"

He's falling into the piece, very comfortable. Like the way he sings, way back and so in the middle of the music all the time - in a big way. He's like a horn player, just covering the whole thing like Ben Webster. Elmore is killer. He is just so great. Of course, you have to play an instrument that will let you do that. If your instrument is too good and too loud, you can't fall into the note. It'll jump too fast. You won't be able to insinuate the note. The instrument will be ahead of you all the time. And the microphone has to be a certain distance from the amp for that to work. So good. He was definitely a fingerstyle guy - you can t be flatpicking bottleneck! I don't hear a thumbpick catching, and I've listened to those records a lot. On the other hand, he might have used a thumbpick to get volume while playing in a nightclub with drums. I've been surprised by that.

FRED MCDOWEII, "WHEN I LAY MY BURDEN DOWN"

Fred McDowell and his wife Annie. That country way, like that old blind guy we see today, Leon Pinson. See, they play a note and then the bass strings. They don't play them together much. That's the convention. Play the melody and then some rhythm and then the melody. McDowell is very country, and yet Elmore is from the country. So what the fuck? What are you gonna do? The question in my mind was always why this extreme radical difference in players, other than the fact that the people are different? It just has to do with the genius of the people, how their traditional expression is so heightened. And nowhere else does that happen. Everybody else in places tribal tends to do the same thing - it's a conservative environment. You all do what you do. You jump up and down the same way, you paint your faces the same way. It's shared. It's not so much geared to the individual, except in this country, almost. Why is that?

HAMBONE WILLIE NEWBERN, "ROLL AND TUMBLE BLUES"

This is 1929? No shit! Sure is Robert Johnson's total trip right there. Really amazing. God, hardly any difference. He's got that funny sound on that lick. It's hard to do that.

SON HOUSE, "MY BLACK MAMA"

That's Son House. He played slide at a 45 degree angle for dissonance, minor chords. Beautiful sound in that tuning. If you wear the bottleneck on the ring finger, you've got to tilt your hand just a little in order to go up. It sure sounds good. It's great to see it done on the videos. How else you gonna know? You can't tell from the records. You'd have no fuckin' idea.

CASEY BILL WELDON, "GO AHEAD BUDDY"

[Laughs at lyrics] Hawaiian. Sol Hoopii did that stuff so good. Jesus! A master at that. Once in a while, somebody could really do it. It's hard to play that syncopated stuff. It's almost impossible.

1978

Between tracks, Ry repeatedly makes reference to the Golden Gate Quartet.

I hope that you find the information useful, both here and on Neil's site. If you have any comments or information to add then please contact me via rylanders@mellor.uk.com
Revised 20th July 1999