Word: cooder
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...playing in which something like a piece of broken glass is used to fret the strings to produce a strong, lowdown sound. A few decades ago it was the sound of a whole genus of American music that might be called backroads blues. Today its best exponent is Ry Cooder, a guitarist and singer of wry wit and concentrated energy who has extended the troubadour tradition of Woody Guthrie and fashioned a distinctive personality for himself from the shards of the American musical past...
When Ry (short for Ryland) Cooder's fourth and latest album, Paradise and Lunch, popped up at the shallow end of the charts this summer, the reaction at Warner Bros. Records was gratification tinged with a trace of awe. Cooder has no gruesomely elaborate stagecraft or lifestyle, and his work is not the sort that goes down easily with Carly Simon fans or Elton John aficionados. His music is elegantly eclectic, running from Leadbelly and Sleepy John Estes blues numbers through main-line ballads of the 1940s to reggae and rock 'n' roll. "Ry's pure...
When Warners first signed Cooder five years ago, he had worked as a session man around Los Angeles and with the Rolling Stones in England. His dexterous rhythm work on guitar and mandolin had won him a reputation as a good musician who could juice up anyone's record, and he played behind everyone from Captain Beefheart and the Everly Brothers to Paul Anka. His work on the sound track of 1970's Performance, a movie of scattershot brilliance about a gangster and a rock star, further keyed up interest in Cooder's own album debut...
...Cooder is a revisionist, an adapter, not an original composer. He snuggles into history like a time traveler, singing in a husky, good-natured voice that carefully preserves a ragged edge. But it is his w12ardry with a bottleneck that gives him a tangible link with the old Delta bluesmen. Cooder applies the neck of a vinegar bottle to his Martin D45 guitar and makes the music ring, giving the notes a natural resonance in which you can almost hear the past...
...Cooder Those who missed the superb guitar playing and Depression-era balladeering of Ry Cooder at Sanders Theater get another chance to catch him Sunday, May 19 at The Performance Center...