Ry Cooder

Ry Cooder displays extraordinary adaptability whether appearing as a session player, fronting his own recordings, or supplying music for motion pictures, channeling his guitar mastery, original material, and interpretive choices across a sweeping array of North American idioms that include rock & roll, blues, reggae, Tex-Mex, Hawaiian, Dixieland jazz, country, folk, R&B, gospel, and vaudeville. He has functioned as an informal envoy of American culture, playing a key role in assembling the Cuban ensemble that became internationally celebrated as the Buena Vista Social Club. After issuing a string of landmark Warner Bros. albums throughout the 1970s and early 1980s—among them Paradise and Lunch, Into the Purple Valley, and Bop 'til You Drop—he paired with Ali Farka Toure, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, and Manuel Galban on subsequent duet projects. Cooder has distinguished himself as a film composer, contributing scores to Walter Hill's The Long Riders, Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas and The End of Violence, and Tony Richardson's The Border. He has earned six Grammy Awards and received many more nominations across fields extending from children's music and folk through Latin pop and traditional, Americana, and world music. Prominent 21st-century releases encompass the conceptual Chavez Ravine, San Patricio with the Chieftains, and a sequence of topical folk albums including My Name's Buddy. The 2018 album Prodigal Son signaled a return to roots rock, while 2022's Get on Board: The Songs of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee with Taj Mahal paid tribute to the Piedmont blues duo Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee.

Beginning his professional path at age 16, Cooder joined a blues band in 1963 alongside Jackie DeShannon before co-founding the short-lived Rising Sons in 1965 with Taj Mahal and Spirit drummer Ed Cassidy. Producer Terry Melcher discovered him via the Rising Sons and brought him into sessions with Paul Revere & the Raiders. As a sought-after session musician his signature slide guitar enhanced recordings by Captain Beefheart on Safe as Milk, Randy Newman, Little Feat, Van Dyke Parks, the Rolling Stones on Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers, Taj Mahal, and Gordon Lightfoot, in addition to appearances on the soundtracks for Candy and Performance.

Cooder launched his solo career in 1970 with a self-titled debut that drew on material by Leadbelly, Blind Willie Johnson, Sleepy John Estes, and Woody Guthrie. The follow-up Into the Purple Valley introduced longtime associates Jim Keltner on drums and Jim Dickinson on bass, while that record and Boomer's Story largely revisited and polished the rhythmic approach and atmosphere of the first. In 1974 he delivered what many consider his finest album, Paradise and Lunch; its successor Chicken Skin Music merged Tex-Mex, Hawaiian, gospel, and soul elements with contributions from Flaco Jimenez and Gabby Pahinui. Bop 'til You Drop, released in 1979, became the first major-label album recorded digitally. Early in the 1980s Cooder expanded his solo work into film scoring on Blue Collar, The Long Riders, and The Border, later composing for Paris, Texas, Streets of Fire, Alamo Bay, Blue City, Crossroads, Cocktail, Johnny Handsome, and Steel Magnolias, among others; Music by Ry Cooder (1995) gathered two discs of highlights from these efforts.

In 1992 Cooder teamed with Keltner, John Hiatt, and British songwriter Nick Lowe—each of whom had contributed to Hiatt's Bring the Family—to form Little Village, which toured and released one album. Shifting focus to world music, he recorded A Meeting by the River with Indian musician V.M. Bhatt. The subsequent duet project Talking Timbuktu with renowned African guitarist Ali Farka Touré captured the 1994 Grammy for Best World Music Recording.

Cooder's next cross-cultural venture became one of the most celebrated rediscoveries of the 20th century. In 1997 he traveled to Cuba to produce and perform with a circle of son musicians who had enjoyed little recognition beyond their own country. The resulting Buena Vista Social Club achieved platinum status worldwide, elevated Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer, and Rubén González to stardom, and earned Cooder another Grammy. He sustained collaborations with his Buena Vista colleagues, notably the 2003 partnership with Manuel Galbán titled Mambo Sinuendo, and participated in sessions with James Taylor, Aaron Neville, Warren Zevon, and Spanish diva Luz Casal.

Cooder returned to solo work in 2005 with Chavez Ravine, his first such album since 1987's Get Rhythm; the release inaugurated a trilogy exploring the erosion of Los Angeles cultural history through gentrification. Chavez Ravine was succeeded by My Name Is Buddy in 2007 and the trilogy's concluding chapter I, Flathead in 2009. In 2010 Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains enlisted him to produce an album centered on the San Patricios, a contingent of Irish immigrant soldiers who abandoned the American Army during the 1846 Mexican-American War to oppose James Polk's Manifest Destiny doctrine; the outcome, San Patricio, vividly recounts that intricate episode. Early in 2011 a headline concerning bankers and wealthy interests who profited from bailouts amid the mortgage and economic crisis prompted the song "No Banker Left Behind," which opened 2011's Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down—an album that revisited the musical language of his earliest recordings while addressing political and social corruption, the distortion of American history, and an emerging class conflict. One month after its release, Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights published Cooder's debut collection of short fiction, Los Angeles Stories. He pursued this socio-political direction further with Election Special in summer 2012 and the 2013 live album Live in San Francisco, his first concert recording in 35 years, credited to Cooder and Corridos Famosos featuring son Joachim on percussion, Flaco Jimenez on accordion, Robert Francis on bass, and vocalists Terry Evans, Arnold McCuller, and Juliette Commagere, with guest appearances by the ten-piece Mexican brass band La Banda Juvenil. In 2014 Rhino Records issued the seven-disc box set Soundtracks, an expansive survey of his film scores from the 1980s and 1990s.

After collaborating with Ricky Skaggs in 2017 on bluegrass and country-gospel material, Cooder's son, percussionist Joachim, urged him to record an album of country and blues-gospel songs. Joachim arranged the eleven tracks while the elder Cooder expanded them for a full band. Entitled The Prodigal Son, the set contains eight covers drawn from the Pilgrim Travelers, Blind Willie Johnson, and Carter Stanley, plus three originals. A live-in-studio video of the title track appeared in late March, and The Prodigal Son itself arrived in May 2018, followed by Cooder's first American tour in fifteen years, supported by his own band—including Joachim on drums and percussion—and backing vocals from the Hamiltones. That same year he joined the cast of Joachim's album Fuchsia Machu Picchu.

Cooder and Taj Mahal had been acquainted since shortly after high school, having performed together in the roots, blues, and electric rock outfit Rising Sons during the mid-1960s; Cooder contributed rhythm guitar—while Jesse Ed Davis handled lead—to Mahal's 1968 self-titled Columbia debut. They reunited in 2022 to record Get on Board: The Songs of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee for Nonesuch. This tribute to the Piedmont bluesmen featured eleven songs captured live on the studio floor, drawn from the duo's extensive discography and performances, with Joachim the sole additional musician, supplying bass and percussion.