The Ry Cooder Story

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The Ry Cooder Story “The Ry Cooder Story“ delves deep into the legendary career of master guitarist Ry Cooder

06/08/2025

We proudly present I Sing You a True Song: The Ry Cooder Story, the perfect complement to our podcast, is now available in book form. After an insane amount of reorganizing, rewriting, and editing, this 500-page book is the first comprehensive monograph to explore the full scope of Cooder’s work. It includes a preface, a brand-new introduction, and all the information that will delight any Cooder fan, including a complete discography, a list of stage appearances, a bibliography, and an index. While most chapters are based on podcast episodes, some content has been moved or rearranged. For instance, one chapter is entirely devoted to the Rolling Stones. Similar to the podcast, I Sing You a True Song is a true do-it-yourself project. It is now available for purchase worldwide on Amazon as a print edition or e-book. Please spread the word about this labor of love. Thank you! Here‘s the link: https://www.amazon.com/-/de/Sing-You-True-Song-Cooder/dp/B0FKZWR5F2

18/06/2025

Out tomorrow: Get on Board (2022)! In our final episode for now, we discuss Cooder's brief U.S. tour with Rosanne Cash, titled The Music of Johnny Cash, as well as his latest collaboration with Taj Mahal, Get on Board. On this album, they pay tribute to two of their early musical heroes, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. We're still hoping for a sequel, but this could be a fitting conclusion to their long careers.

05/06/2025

Episode 42 out now: The Prodigal Son (2018). In 2015, Cooder went on tour with bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White of the renowned country band The Whites. The tour featured a lot of gospel music and directly inspired Cooder's presumably final solo album, The Prodigal Son, which was released in 2018. It's a great and fitting farewell, and there is much to say about it, as well as the subsequent North American and European tours.

22/05/2025

Out now: Episode 41: Live in San Francisco (2013). Hard as it is to believe, Live At The Great American Music Hall was only Cooder's second official full-length live album. As with 1977's Show Time, he had no intention of putting the emphasis on new music, but instead performed a great mix of his live classics. His band consisted almost entirely of old friends like Flaco Jiménez and Terry Evans, and family members like son Joachim, Juliette Commagere, and Robert Francis. In this episode, we also introduce them and the albums they made with Cooder in the years that followed.

08/05/2025

Episode 40 out now! A year after the deeply political Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down, Cooder went one step further and made Election Special, his contribution to the 2012 presidential election in the United States. Clearly on Obama's side and genuinely angry about the corporate takeover of society, he made an album in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, Joe Hill and Pete Seeger: a collection of folk and rock songs for the modern depression. It is as relevant today as it was then, to say the least.

22/04/2025

Out this Thursday: Episode 39 - Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down (2011)! In response to the Bush presidency, Cooder produced what could be described as the modern-day equivalent of the kind of dustbowl ballads Woody Guthrie once sang. On Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down, Cooder took aim at politicians, corporate greed and military action – all issues close to Guthrie's heart in the 1930s and '40s.– In this episode we also talk about Cooder's first and only book, and a few other things.

09/04/2025

Episode 38 out tomorrow: I, Flathead (2008)! - On I, Flathead, the final part of his California trilogy, Cooder turns his attention to the blue-collar types of the fifties and their music. It is about the kind of workers who toiled in the old Santa Monica airplane factory a few blocks from his childhood home, and the country, honky-tonk, and western swing he listened to so intently on the radio as a boy.

27/03/2025

Episode 37 out now: My Blueberry Nights / We'll Never Turn Back! 2007 brought us not only Cooder's solo effort My Name Is Buddy, but also some very interesting contributions. He composed film music for Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights. And with Mavis Staples, he made an album that's right up there with his best productions. We’ll Never Turn Back is not one hundred percent Cooder, but it's certainly ninety-nine and a half. We also take a look at some more session work.

13/03/2025

Episode 36 out now! Two years after Chávez Ravine, My Name Is Buddy was a return to folk and Dustbowl blues. In other words, to the kind of music Cooder had begun his career with. It is a song cycle set in the 1930s, but with clear references to the present - another California opus that would become the middle part of a full-fledged trilogy. Needless to say, it was another masterpiece.

27/02/2025

New episode out today: Chávez Ravine (2005)!

24/02/2025

Episode 35 out on February 27: Chávez Ravine (2005). "Chávez Ravine" can mean many things. Obviously, there is an area in Los Angeles by that name. But there is also a book, a short documentary, and a Ry Cooder album, in that order. Cooder's 12th solo effort wouldn't exist without the book or the documentary. Like the Buena Vista Social Club, it came about almost by accident. And again, it was an opportunity he knew how to seize. It became his own ode to a lost Shangri-La – a masterful street-corner opera.

13/02/2025

Episode 34 out today: Hollow Bamboo (2000)/Mambo Sinuendo (2002) - At the beginning of the new millennium, Cooder was once again deeply involved in world music. He released two back-to-back collaborative albums, this time with Indian flutist Ronu Majumdar and Cuban guitar wizard Manuel Galbán. As with his collaborations with V.M. Bhatt and Ali Farka Touré ten years earlier, he mostly took a back seat and helped them do their own thing. In this episode we also talk briefly about the Cuban follow-ups of the Buena Vista Social Club and some of Cooder's other session projects.

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