Ry Cooder

Ry Cooder has a NEW album, but that's not why I'm writing this. I caught up with Ry Cooder over the phone for his first live album release in 35 years. Corridos Fomosos, he corrected my pronunciation as you'll hear. This was a live album recorded over two nights at a venue in San Francisco. There's a stellar cast of musicians on this album. His son Joachim on percussion, Flaco Jimenez on accordion, Robert Francis on bass, and vocalists Terry Evans, Arnold McCuller, and Juliette Commagere. The ten-piece Mexican brass band La Banda Juvenil also guested. He had recorded at the same venue in San Francisco 35 years earlier. On this album there were up to 18 people on stage at one point. He wasn't informed they were recording the concert. Whilst they were driving home to LA later that evening he was informed by his sound engineer of the recording. Although this latest album released in 2018, Prodigal Son is his first solo album.

Many will remember Ry Cooder from the film Buena Vista Social Club. The album for this was recorded over seven days in Havana in 1996. Bringing together many of the great names of the Golden Age in Cuban Music in the 1950's. I was fortunate enough to see them perform in Hyde Park in London sometime after this.

Records were not only a first love, but an escape. As a boy growing up in Santa Monica, California. in the 1950's, listening to records was a lens into a wider world for him. He says the first albums that caught his imagination were from traveling blues and gospel musicians.

"First of all I wanted to get out," Cooder says. "You know, where should I go? You know, what would I like to do? I'd like to go meet these people, see them and play their guitar and learn to play. That's what I wanted to do. Well, I'm still on that road."

The virtuoso guitarist and composer has been on that road for nearly 50 years now.

He began playing guitar at the age of three. He's been ranked as one of the greatest guitarists on lists compiled by many publications and media outlets. He initially started performing with a Banjo. He later applied Banjo tuning and the three finger roll to his guitar playing.

He first attracted attention playing with Captain Beefheart. Later playing with the Rolling Stones, some of his work appearing on their albums. Throughout the 1970's he released a series of records showcasing his guitar work with Warner Bros records initially on their Reprise record label. He later featured with Van Morrison amongst others on their albums and tours.

He is also known for his film soundtracks, including Paris, Texas the acclaimed Wim Wenders film. He recorded the sound of the desert where the film was mainly shot, discovering this was in the key of E flat which he then tuned all the musical instruments to.

He's been joined in these later years by his son Joachim Cooder, initially on drums but now his chief collaborator also. The latest album The Prodigal Son has achieved better sales performance in the US in over a decade. Including chart entries in many countries for this album, it's been described as "A masterwork of roots, blues and R&B, The Prodigal Son conjures our own history of the spirit, sounding completely fresh and contemporary, framed by Cooder’s expressive vocals and graceful, elegant guitar work," he said. "“It only took six decades of trying to get good at this,” he joked at the time—and wrote new compositions and selected old songs that sounded fresh and relevant.

Rolling Stone declared, “The Prodigal Son, Cooder’s first album in six years, serves both as an urgent commentary on our current dystopia and a satisfying window into the interpretive process of a musical mastermind,” while the Daily Telegraph affirmed, “The Prodigal Son is destined to become an instant classic. My pick for rock album of the year.” And MOJO’s 5-STAR review proclaimed, “A career-high in an album of highs.”