Conversing with a musician's musician

February 8, 2015 7:18 PM

Ry Cooder shares an hour of vignettes about skipping school in the '50s to teach himself guitar by listenting to hillbilly radio, how he came to work with Flaco Jiminez, being schooled by the old time Cuban musicians in the Buena Vista Social Club recording and more. Music journalist Barry Mazor draws him out about his 50-year career in a delightful and highly entertaining chat - an hour didn't seem nearly long enough.
posted by madamjujujive (6 comments total)

Awesome thanks, this looks great! Love Ry Cooder! Mazor's book looks interesting too. Somewhat relatedly, this book has a pretty interesting, though decidedly unhagiographic, take on Ralph Peer as basically contriving the commercial genres of (black) blues and (white) hillbilly/old-timey (to be: "country and western") from previously thoroughly "miscegenated" southern US folk and popular traditions.
posted by batfish at 7:56 PM on February 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh, this is wonderful. Thanks! Every time I hear Cooder doing a version of Woody Guthrie's Vigilante Man I get chills up my spine. (original studio; recent live)
posted by CincyBlues at 12:00 AM on February 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Never have enough Ry. A musician's musician and a great American.
posted by C.A.S. at 12:27 AM on February 9, 2015

He played on the first Captain Beefheart album "Safe as Milk" in 1967.
posted by JimDe at 4:15 AM on February 9, 2015

JimDe, I sort of forgot about the Beefheart years.

Ry Cooder talks about working with The Captain and The Magic Band

poor quality, but ... Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band- Live in Cannes (1968).
posted by madamjujujive at 6:50 AM on February 9, 2015

...and more.

Just the other night our dinner music was Talking Timbuktu by Ali Farka Toure & Ry Cooder. Great stuff.
posted by BWA at 7:43 AM on February 9, 2015 [1 favorite]