Please Ry harder
I've been trying to get my head around why a certain musician is just an also-ran instead of The Man.
Has Ry Cooder ever really put a foot wrong? Put it another way: has anybody else ever consistently managed to put so many feet right? Starting out as an anonymous session player, he turned in that slide work on "Memo from Turner" before going on to record solo efforts that managed to nail at the first attempt pretty much every genre and subgenre - white, black or Hispanic - in American roots music of the last 100 years, from ragtime, via Delta blues and country boogie, to Tex-Mex. Meanwhile, his side projects have included knocking off one of the (arguably just "the") best non-orchestral soundtracks ever done (Paris, Texas), and skirting the Cuban blockade to salvage pure son from what, even in the Hispanic world, was looking like imminent oblivion.
He's accused of being an exploiter (let me see if I've got this right: taking someone who'd been reduced to playing accompaniment for a primary-school ballet class to Carnegie Hall for a standing ovation is exploitation?), he's accused of being an awkward bugger (Little Village, anyone?). . . he's even accused of academic soullessness. Say what? Has this Sam Cooke song ever been arranged, played and sung more soulfully since the man himself died?
(That's Bobby King singing, by the way - another outstanding musician who, just like Terry Evans, Flaco Jimenez, Freddy Fender and, obviously, the whole Buena Vista crew, most people would probably never even have heard of if it weren't for Ry Cooder.)
So what's wrong with this picture? Around these parts it's always Richard Thompson this and John Martyn that. World-class musicians both, yes, but Ry Cooder is from another planet. Why, then, is he always Ry "Oh, Yeah, Him Too, I Suppose" Cooder whenever the names of our favourite artists are trotted out? He's absurdly talented, artistically astute, highly articulate and for going on 40 years now has displayed more musical good taste and integrity than anyone else I can think of. In these ever-dumbed-down days in which we live in, is Ry Cooder simply too damned good for his own good?
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I agree, mostly
I totally agree Ry is fantastic - I have most of his albums and most of them are excellent. I suspect he is less revered because he is much less visible - doesn't tour, has never been in genre defining bands like Fairport in RT's case, and he writes very little, so again he is less obviously godlike compared to RT or JM. But there is no doubt he is top drawer, and I can't actually remember anyone saying "RT and JM are top, Ry Cooder isn't". Certainly he is up there in my estimation. I saw him with David Lindley a few years ago and it was as good a gig as I've ever seen.
For my money
Ry Cooder's one of the very best. Despite all his success as a musician's musician (i.e. he's never banked billions, but no one has a bad word to say about his technique, his feel, his choice of material and so on) I get the impression he's still not comfortable performing live. Which may explain why his recorded output is so exquisite, and of such a consistently high standard. Where others have made careers out of a triumph of technique over substance, his work is always a triumph of substance over style. The technique is there, but it behaves as it should; it exists to deliver the feel.
Well put
It just miffs me a bit that if he'd stuck to one style instead of exploring every facet of his musical curiosity, he'd probably have had Mark Knopfler's career. He certainly deserved it.
I agree
He is a consummate musician, not a rock star - as we know, they are frequently not the same thing! mind you, when I saw him do Chicken Skin Music at the Free Trade Hall back in, oooh '77 I guess I was convinced he was the next big thing!
Chicken Skin
It still irks me that during one of those Rock Around The Clock marathons in the mid 80s, there was a phone vote for a concert from the vaults. The contenders included Queen and an OGWT special featuring Ry Cooder's Chicken Skin Revue. The winner was, predictably, Queen. A little bit of vote rigging wouldn't have gone amiss.
Anyway, here is He'll Have To Go.
Here is The Dark End Of The Street
And here is Goodnight Irene
To paraphrase the guy who rejected Fred Astaire...
...can't sing, has only one functioning eye, can play guitar a bit. That's why he seems to be an also-ran, Archie. Yes, he is a wonderful, wonderful guitarist and arranger but his voice makes Richard Thompson's sound like Sinatra and he's never written a song worth a damn.
Couldn't agree less.....
OK, his self-pens are a wee bit derivative, but his voice has a pleasant, ill-fitting yet comfortable resonance and the duo of Bop till you drop and Borderline, where he nearly had aenough shove to break thru', are as delightful LPs as you can find, vocally, musically and grin-inducingly. Plus this is the guy who allowed accordion and mariachi music a place at the table, as well as going out on a limb for cuban music, being sued and blacklisted as a result, by his own government.
John Martyn and Richard Thompson...
..have their own oeuvres, Ry hasn't. He maybe deserves an award for introducing the world to some wonderful music that might otherwise have been overlooked, a chair in the Electric Guitar Hall Of Fame and a nod for a couple of very pleasant albums but he ain't Martyn or Thompson because his oeuvre is someone else's.
Again, disagree..
I think his oeuvre, when not resuscitating endangered musical species, is to rekindle quirky old r'n'b, with unexpected guitar rhythms, and consummate musicians adding backing to his ragged vocal. (Yeah, not very snappy description, so lets call it polyrhythmic bluestyle)
Not a half bad conventional slide guitarrist also, as evidenced with John Hiatt, as well as his own.
And I wonder how much of an assumption it is that he is eking out a pitiful existence in penury, compared to the Midas like Thompson and Martyn, with their white horses and ladies by the score. Suspect he is doing OK.
(Was the video, mentioned below, the one with Van Dyke Parks on piano? That was cool.)
I am a fan...
...in case you thought otherwise. Saw the Chicken Skin Review and Little Village, own all the records. Just attempting an answer to Archie's valid question. I am sure that Buena Vista Social Club alone has sold more than the combined Thompson and Martyn catalogues. My point is that we Word folks hold our artists - and it probably all starts with Dylan because everything does - in higher esteem if they move us with their words and melodies.
Couldn't agree more
What is surely crying out for a DVD release is the concert film of him and his band, 'The Moula Banda Rhythm Aces' made sometime in 1987-88 from which the first clip in this thread is taken. Filmed at a venue in California and presumably part of a promo event for his Get Rhythm album which he never toured. Certainly not in the UK anyway.
I have it on VHS taped off the telly over 15 years ago now and its a gem of a thing. Beautifully expressive guitar player and his backing vocalists steal the show though he, rightly, seems utterly un-bothered.
He did tour the UK...
...with The Moula Banda Rhythm Aces in the late 80s. I saw them at Wembley Arena. Unfortunately, the sound was appalling (the drums had an echo which was very off putting) so it made for a disappointing evening.
I was there
I enjoyed it, but I had pretty good seats. A colossally wrong choice of venue, though, I agree. Now if they'd played a month's residency at the Mean Fiddler instead. . . .
"Around these parts..."
"it's always Richard Thomson this, John Martyn that"
Ry Cooder's been on the cover of The Word hasn't he? Don't think either Richard Thompson or John Martyn have though.