Ry Cooder is a virtuoso on fretted instruments —slide guitar, mandolin, Mexican tiple, banjo, Middle Eastern saz —who crossbreeds his own sense of syncopation with vernacular musics. As a fan/musicologist, he has sought out local styles such as calypso, Hawaiian slack-key guitar, Tex-Mex, gospel, country, vaudeville “coon songs," and most recently, with the Buena Vista Social Club, prerevolutionary Cuban music. He records with L.A. session players and various “ethnic" musicians in and out of their own contexts.
Cooder began playing the guitar when he was three years old. He has had a glass eye since he was four, when he accidentally stuck a knife in his left eye. In the early '60s Cooder became active in Southern California blues and folk circles, and in 1963 he played in an unsuccessful group with vocalist Jackie DeShannon. With Taj Mahal, another musical archivist, he started the Rising Sons in 1966.
He also appears on Mahal's debut album. Cooder was a busy session player in the late '60s, working for Gordon Lightfoot and on numerous commercials. He was a member of Captain Beefheart's Safe As Milk (1967), although he quit just before Beefheart was scheduled to play the Monterey Pop Festival. He also sat in on Little Feat's 1971 debut LP.
Cooder appeared on the soundtracks of Candy (1968) and Performance (1970, with Mick Jagger) and claims to have recorded extensively on the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed. Although he is credited only for the mandolin on “Love in Vain," he claims to have provided the main riff for the Stones' “Honky Tonk Women."
Since 1969, when he got a solo contract, Cooder has cut down on session work to concentrate on his yearly albums. His general strategy is to rework obscure songs (mostly pre-'60s) in his own lunging, syncopated style laced with elements from outside rock.
He has championed the music of Bahamian guitarist Joseph Spence (a major influence), and he later produced an album by the Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band. On 1974's Paradise and Lunch, he recorded a duet with jazz pianist Earl “Fatha" Hines, and following Chicken Skin Music (1976), he toured with a band that included Mexican accordionist Flaco Jimenez and a Tex-Mex rhythm section alongside gospel-style singers Bobby King, Eldridge King, and Terry Evans (documented on the live Showtime). Complete on: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=81722
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