Cooder

1994 Grammy winner for Best World Music Album. American composer, musicologist and guitar legend Ry Cooder teams with North Indian musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt to create an exquisite musical realm, with both musicians playing exceptional slide guitar. Their collaboration evokes musical elements from many cultures and styles. Percussion by Sukhvindar Singh on tabla and Cooder's 14-year-old son Joachim on dumbek. The album is included in Tom Moon's 2008 book 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die.

Rhino presents a retrospective boxed set with seven CDs that focus on Cooder s work in the Eighties and early Nineties: The Long Riders, Alamo Bay, Paris, Texas, Blue City, Crossroads, Johnny Handsome and Trespass. RY COODER: SOUNDTRACKS will be available on September 29th. A digital version will also be available. The music is presented in a clamshell box that features new artwork by Tornado Design, the group behind the distinctive look found on several of Cooder s recent studio albums, as well as Rhino s 2008 anthology, The UFO Has Landed. After Cooder worked on soundtracks for Watermelon Man and Performance (starring Mick Jagger), he began producing soundtracks on his own. He started in 1980 with The Long Riders. It was the first of many soundtracks that Cooder would record for the film s director, Walter Hill. Many of them are included in this set: Crossroads, Johnny Handsome, Trespass, and Blue City, a film Hill produced.

STUNNING ALL ACOUSTIC BROADCAST FROM RY COODER AT CAMBRIDGE IN 1979 Bop Till You Drop, Ry Cooder's eighth album, was released in July 1979 and remains the first digitally recorded major-label album in popular music, recorded as it was on a digital 32-track machine built by 3M. The album consists almost entirely of covers of earlier rhythm and blues and rock and roll classics, including Elvis Presley's Little Sister and the 1965 Fontella Bass-Bobby McClure hit Don't Mess Up a Good Thing , on which Cooder duetted with soul star Chaka Khan. Khan also performed on the only original track on the album, Down in Hollywood.

Collection includes: 'Ry Cooder' (1970) # 7599-27510-2, 'Into the Purple Valley' (1971) # 7599-27200-2, 'Boomer's Story' (1972) # 7599-26398-2.

COODER AND LOWE BACK TOGETHER AFTER ALMOST 30 YEARS Their first collaboration since the early 1990s when, alongside John Hiatt and Jim Keltner, they were, collectively, one half of the short-lived, supergroup Little Village, Ry Cooder and Nick Lowe s tour of Japan, Australia and New Zealand in 2009 was something of a revelation. Performing cuts written by each, a number of choice cover versions, plus the co-composed, One Of These Days, You re Gonna Pay , the duo s show at The Orchard Hall in Tokyo on 11th November was possibly the finest concert these two mavericks performed together during this welcome jaunt. Featured in its entirety on this new CD and available here for the first time, this broadcast recording is certain to become a must-have release for fans of this pair of old - perhaps - but quite perfectly matured, timers!

Live recording in San Francisco at the Great American Music Hall, December 15th 1976.

Johnny Handsome is a 1989 American crime drama film directed by Walter Hill and starring Mickey Rourke, Ellen Barkin, Forest Whitaker and Morgan Freeman. The film was written by Ken Friedman, and adapted from the novel The Three Worlds of Johnny Handsome by John Godey. The music for the film was written, produced and performed by Ry Cooder.

Election Special is the fifteenth studio album by Ry Cooder. After his 2011 album Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, Cooder continued writing topical and storyline-inspired songs. Displeased with the Republican Party and its financial supporters, he also wanted to write an album that would address listeners during the United States presidential election of 2012, which he believed to be a critical event in the country's history. Election Special is an American roots and blues rock album of protest songs with music characterized by upbeat melodies, simple instrumentation, and sparse arrangements. Cooder played all of the instruments, including bass, guitar, and mandolin, with the exception of drums by his son Joachim. A deeply political album, it expands on the socio-political musings and current event topics of Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down with forthright, satirical lyrics and song-form vignettes. Cooder's songwriting exhibits liberal and populist sentiments and draws on older musical sources such as broadside ballads and country blues.

Ry Cooder’s multi-genre style mostly spans blues, country, gospel, folk, and calypso but ultimately knows no boundries. The late 60’s saw Ry as a session man and collaborator to many talents such as The Rolling Stones, Randy Newman, and Lowell George to name just a few. He is even rumored to have shown Keith Richards his 5-string open G tuning that Keith lives by now during these late 60’s sessions. The main portion of the disc was recorded at The Bottom Line in New York and features a solo performance that comes from an excellent crystal clear soundboard recording. A master of fingerstyle and downright dangerous with a slide, only his vocal lacks a bit but is good enough to accomplish exactly what he was after.

Ry Cooder's exceptional Paradise and Lunch takes a popular precept – music as the common denominator across all languages and styles – to extremes few artists have envisioned let alone fulfilled. Considered by many diehards to be the California native's finest hour, the 1974 set unfurls with rarified levels of joyousness, ingenuity, and sophistication. A prime contender for any Desert Island list and an album that repeatedly restores your faith in the inimitable effects experienced upon listening to special performances, Paradise and Lunch is an eternal "musicians' musician" record – an adventurous, ambitious, soulful leap down roads well-traveled and paths less known. Such eclecticism, virtuosity, and ebullience resonate with unmatched verve on our hybrid SACD. Mastered from the original master tapes and strictly limited to 2000 numbered copies, this audiophile reissue boasts dead-quiet surfaces, superb transient response, front-to-back soundstaging, and an organic immediacy that heightens the enjoyment, character, and craft of the arrangements.