Ry Cooder – I, Flathead [Remastered] (2008/2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Ry Cooder – I, Flathead [Remastered] (2008/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 53:05 minutes | 614 MB | Genre: Blues Rock, Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch

Ry Cooder’s I, Flathead, is the culmination of his ambitious and fascinating “California Trilogy”, the last of three albums in which the singer and guitarist journeys through the real and imagined history of mid-20th century, multi-ethnic California, sampling the sounds of its barrios and byways, its nightclubs and honkytonks. He encounters the disenfranchised, the hopeful, the cheerfully strange and seriously nefarious, along with the occasional alien who races around in a souped-up flying saucer on the desert salt flats. On previous instalments, Ch’avez Ravine (2005) and My Name Is Buddy (2007), learning the facts and stories behind Cooder’s songs made them even more compelling, whether it was the not-quite vanished legacy of the Ch’avez Ravine neighbourhood of Los Angeles, bulldozed to make way for Dodger Stadium, or the allegorical, Bound For Glory-like adventures of Buddy Red Cat in a time of commie-baiting and union-busting. This time, however, no research is necessary: Cooder, a California native, has written a remarkable 104-page novella to accompany this disc, a surreally funny page-turner of a tale about itinerant musician Kash Buk and the various characters he meets in his travels out west, all of whom get to narrate parts of the story. If you mixed John Steinbeck with, say, Thomas Pynchon, and threw in a bit of Popular Mechanics for good measure, it might read something like the I, Flathead narrative.

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Ry Cooder – Election Special (Remastered) (2012/2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Ry Cooder – Election Special (Remastered) (2012/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 38:38 minutes | 459 MB | Genre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch

Ry Cooder’s Election Special is a wake-up call as the US heads into the 2012 fall election season. On Election Special, which he produced, Cooder plays mandolin, guitar, and bass and wrote all of the songs, co-writing one with Joachim Cooder, who plays drums on the record.

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Ry Cooder and V.M. Bhatt – A Meeting By The River (1993) [Analogue Productions 2008] SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Ry Cooder and V.M. Bhatt – A Meeting By The River (1993) [Analogue Productions 2008]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 Stereo > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 39:51 minutes | Full Scans included | 1,6 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 669 MB

A Meeting by the River can best be described as a spontaneous outpouring of music, unhindered by convention or form, brought into being by musicians so supremely capable that the music is never labored, the technique of their craft always subservient to the final product. Cooder and Bhatt are genuine masters of the guitar and mohan vina, respectively. The latter, an instrument created by Bhatt himself, is a sort of hybrid between a guitar and a vichitra vina, and is played with a metal slide. This fact is just one of the many things that connect Bhatt’s playing to Cooder’s, who plays nothing but bottleneck guitar here. The musical interplay between Cooder and Bhatt is nothing short of astounding, especially so considering that they met for the first time only a half-hour before the recording of this album. The voices of the two instruments blend marvelously, first alternating melodic statements, then doing so together, each dancing around the other, playing cat and mouse, probing, answering, reflecting. They are ably accompanied by a pair of percussionists: tabla player Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari and Cooder’s own son, Joachim, on dumbek. A Meeting by the River is one of those few cross-genre albums in which the listener never feels for a second that there is some kind of fusion going on; one does not hear the component parts so much as the integrated whole. However, one can theoretically separate guitar from vina, America from India, the Mississippi from the Ganges. Once this is done, the resulting music makes more sense than ever before, the combination of two traditions of stringed instruments that use slides to produce sound and value improvisation and voice-like phrasing. As good as this sounds on paper, the actual results are even more impressive. The splendor of the music is aided in its transmission by the fact that, like all Water Lily Acoustics releases, this album is masterfully recorded; each instrument is clear, distinct, and three-dimensional sounding. A Meeting by the River is a must-own, a thing of pure, unadulterated beauty, and the strongest record in Cooder’s extensive catalog.

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Ry Cooder – Paradise And Lunch (1974) [MFSL 2017] SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Ry Cooder – Paradise And Lunch (1974) [MFSL 2017]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 37:03 minutes | Scans included | 1,5 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 706 MB
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab # UDSACD 2159 | Genre: Blues Rock

Ry Cooder understands that a great song is a great song, whether it was written before the Depression or last week. Still, at the same time he isn’t afraid to explore new avenues and possibilities for the material. Like his three previous records, Paradise and Lunch is filled with treasures which become part of a world where eras and styles converge without ever sounding forced or contrived. One may think that an album that contains a traditional railroad song, tunes by assorted blues greats, and a Negro spiritual alongside selections by the likes of Bobby Womack, Burt Bacharach, and Little Milton may lack cohesiveness or merely come across as a history lesson, but to Cooder this music is all part of the same fabric and is as relevant and accessible as anything else that may be happening at the time. No matter when it was written or how it may have been done in the past, the tracks, led by Cooder’s brilliant guitar, are taken to new territory where they can coexist. It’s as if Washington Phillips’ “Tattler” could have shared a place on the charts with Womack’s “It’s All Over Now” or Little Milton’s “If Walls Could Talk.” That he’s successful on these, as well as the Salvation Army march of “Jesus on the Mainline” or the funky, gospel feel of Blind Willie McTell’s “Married Man’s a Fool,” is not only a credit to Cooder’s talent and ingenuity as an arranger and bandleader, but also to the songs themselves. The album closes with its most stripped-down track, an acoustic guitar and piano duet with jazz legend Earl “Fatha” Hines on the Blind Blake classic “Ditty Wah Ditty.” Here both musicians are given plenty of room to showcase their instrumental prowess, and the results are nothing short of stunning. Eclectic, intelligent, and thoroughly entertaining, Paradise and Lunch remains Ry Cooder’s masterpiece.

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Ry Cooder – Chicken Skin Music (1976) [MFSL 2018] SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Ry Cooder – Chicken Skin Music (1976) [MFSL 2018]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 39:36 minutes | Scans included | 1,63 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Full Scans included | 858 MB
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab # UDSACD 2161 | Genre: Rock

The title of Ry Cooder’s Chicken Skin Music – Hawaiian slang for goosebumps – serves as a direct, simple description of the album’s emotional appeal. But it barely scratches the surface of a 1976 effort that triggered an interest in “world music” a decade before the term became commonplace and a genre into and of itself. Part of a series of inimitable mid-1970s records on which Cooder ignored traditional boundaries and instigated lasting cross-cultural communication, Chicken Skin Music blends gospel, Hawaiian, folk, blues, and Tex-Mex styles into a brilliant roots stew distinguished with virtuosic playing and inspired contextual surprises. Mastered from the original master tapes and strictly limited to 2000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity’s hybrid SACD of Chicken Skin Music brings the brilliant instrumental textures and lively tonalities to the fore like no prior digital edition.

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Ry Cooder – Boomer’s Story (1972) [MFSL 2017] SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Ry Cooder – Boomer’s Story (1972) [MFSL 2017]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 38:46 minutes | Scans included | 1,58 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 754 MB
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab # UDSACD 2154 | Genre: Rock, Blues

Boomer’s Story, Ry Cooder’s third record, continues his archeological dig through music’s familiar and forgotten past. As was the case with his previous recordings, he not only looks to the masters – including blues legend Sleepy John Estes, songwriter Dan Penn (both of whom appear here) and the great Skip James – for material, but to lost and neglected pieces of American folk and blues, as well. Cooder adds the traditional title-track, which opens the album, and Lawrence Wilson’s “Crow Black Chicken,” which dates back to the late 1920s, to this collection of discoveries – both of which are handled with just the right balance of personality and reverence. Elsewhere, he injects a dark irony into the jingoistic “Rally ‘Round the Flag,” with its slow, mournful piano (played by Randy Newman) and slide guitar, while the Joseph Spence-style guitar arrangement of the World War II standard “Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer” has a sense of hope and conviction. Often criticized for possessing a less than commanding voice, Cooder steps back from the microphone for four of the album’s ten tracks – three instrumentals and one featuring Sleepy John Estes on his own “President Kennedy.” And while all of the instrumentals presented here are fine renditions of great tunes, it’s “Dark End of the Street” which truly stands out. Here, Cooder realizes that the only thing in his arsenal that can do justice to James Carr’s definitive version is his own remorseful slide guitar. Without uttering a single lyric, he’s able to convey the shame and deep regret of the Dan Penn/Chips Moman classic. Thanks to moments like this, along with Cooder’s consistently strong choice of material and brilliant guitar work, Boomer’s Story – less eccentric than his first, and less eclectic than Into the Purple Valley – ranks among his best work.

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Ry Cooder – The Prodigal Son (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Ry Cooder – The Prodigal Son (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 50:16 minutes | 904 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Fantasy Records

Ry Cooder’s first new release in six years, The Prodigal Son, is all America, our spiritual, hopeful voices, our raw cries and our sly provocations, voiced through the songs of the Pilgrim Travelers, The Stanley Brothers, Blind Willie Johnson, and Ry Cooder himself.

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Ry Cooder – Pull up Some Dust and Sit Down (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ry Cooder – Pull up Some Dust and Sit Down (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:24 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch

Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, issued between two national election cycles, is the most overtly political album Ry Cooder has ever released, and one of his funniest, most musically compelling ones, too. Cooder looks deeply into his musical past using his entire Americana musical arsenal: blues, folk, ragtime, norte~no, rock, and country here. Opener “No Banker Left Behind” updates Civil War-era marching music. Cooder’s guitar, banjo, bass, and mandola lead drummer (and son) Joachim through a scathing indictment of the the financial bailout in 2007. The marching rhythms are punched through with sharp banjo and mandola riffs as Cooder’s signature electric guitar sound frames them. “El Corrido Jesse James” has the outlaw speaking from heaven in waltz time. Accompanied by Flaco Jimenez’s accordion and a horn section, James claims that while he was a bank robber, he never “turned a family from their house,” and asks God for his trusty .44 to “put that bonus money back where it belongs.” “Quick Sand” is a shuffling electric rocker that addresses the plight of illegal immigrants crossing into Arizona. “Christmas Time This Year” is the most incendiary anti-war song in a decade, presented innocently as a Mexican polka. “Lord Tell Me Why” borrows production techniques from Tom Waits, with co-writer and drummer Jim Keltner who assists in getting across this biting, ironic gospel tune: “Lord tell me why a white man/Ain’t worth nothin’ in this world no more….” An 11-piece band assists in “I Want My Crown,” a scorching, growling blues with Cooder’s nasty guitar leading the charge. It’s followed by the album’s finest moment, “John Lee Hooker for President,” where Cooder does a shockingly accurate impression of the late bluesman, in fine boogie mode, paying a visit to the White House, not liking what he sees, and deciding to run for office: “I’m compastatic. I ain’t Republican or Democratic.” He names Jimmy Reed as Veep and Johnny Taylor Secretary of State. His campaign promises swift retribution for injustice and a “groove time” for the nation. If only. The depth of Cooder’s rage is quieter but more direct as the album draws to a close. In “If There Is a God,” God’s been driven from heaven by redistricting; he, “Jesus, Mary and Joe” all hit the road for Mexico. God goes so far as to say he thinks the “Republiklan” legislature wants to bring back Jim Crow laws. Cooder’s sorrow about the environment is pervasive in the final corrido, though he, like the Buddha, leaves room for tolerance, wishing his enemies “No Hard Feelings.” Those who’ve followed Cooder from the beginning will find much to love on Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down. Those music fans unfamiliar with his work but looking for a comrade in arms will find one here. That said, this is revolution music; worthy of dancing to, learning from, and singing along with: who says topical music has to be boring? – Thom Jurek

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Ry Cooder – I, Flathead (Remastered) (2008/2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ry Cooder – I, Flathead (Remastered) (2008/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:05 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Blues Rock, Country, Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch

Ry Cooder’s I, Flathead, is the culmination of his ambitious and fascinating “California Trilogy”, the last of three albums in which the singer and guitarist journeys through the real and imagined history of mid-20th century, multi-ethnic California, sampling the sounds of its barrios and byways, its nightclubs and honkytonks. He encounters the disenfranchised, the hopeful, the cheerfully strange and seriously nefarious, along with the occasional alien who races around in a souped-up flying saucer on the desert salt flats. On previous instalments, Ch’avez Ravine (2005) and My Name Is Buddy (2007), learning the facts and stories behind Cooder’s songs made them even more compelling, whether it was the not-quite vanished legacy of the Ch’avez Ravine neighbourhood of Los Angeles, bulldozed to make way for Dodger Stadium, or the allegorical, Bound For Glory-like adventures of Buddy Red Cat in a time of commie-baiting and union-busting. This time, however, no research is necessary: Cooder, a California native, has written a remarkable 104-page novella to accompany this disc, a surreally funny page-turner of a tale about itinerant musician Kash Buk and the various characters he meets in his travels out west, all of whom get to narrate parts of the story. If you mixed John Steinbeck with, say, Thomas Pynchon, and threw in a bit of Popular Mechanics for good measure, it might read something like the I, Flathead narrative.

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Ry Cooder – Election Special (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ry Cooder – Election Special (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 38:38 minutes | 744 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch

Ry Cooder’s Election Special is a wake-up call as the US heads into the 2012 fall election season. On Election Special, which he produced, Cooder plays mandolin, guitar, and bass and wrote all of the songs, co-writing one with Joachim Cooder, who plays drums on the record.

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Ry Cooder – Chávez Ravine (2019 Remaster) (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Ry Cooder – Chávez Ravine (2019 Remaster) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:10:44 minutes | 775 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch

The 12th studio album from Ry Cooder was his first concept album and historical album telling the story of Chavez Ravine. The Mexican-American community was demolished in the ’50s in order to make way for public housing. That housing was never built and, instead, the Brooklyn Dodgers stadium was erected on that site when they moved to L.A.

Chavez Ravine was nominated for Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 2006.

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Ronu Majumdar, Ry Cooder, Jon Hassell, Abhijit Banerjee – Hollow Bamboo (2000) SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Ronu Majumdar, Ry Cooder, Jon Hassell, Abhijit Banerjee – Hollow Bamboo (2000)
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 43:53 minutes | Scans included | 1,79 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 781 MB

Ronu is an outstanding flutist of the Hindustani tradition who has previously been featured on recordings with Jon Hassell, Simon Shaheen & Bela Fleck. “Hollow Bamboo”, a collaboration with Ry Cooder on electric guitar & Turkish oud & Jon Hassell on trumpet, is a mesmerizing blend of Indian folk melodies & electric genre defying compositions.

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Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder – GET ON BOARD (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder - GET ON BOARD (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download

Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder – GET ON BOARD (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 44:33 minutes | 511 MBGenre: Blues
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch

Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder have both made careers out of covering classic tunes from the canons of early blues, gospel, jazz, country, and soul music. As septuagenarians they can fall into these modes by instinct alone. Here these two living encyclopedias of American music (and former bandmates in the Rising Sons, a short-lived Los Angeles blues rock band circa 1965) have recorded a loose and fun jam session, revisiting classics from the catalogs of Reverend Gary Davis and the epic blues partnership of Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry. Rather than straight covers though, Cooder and Mahal—in the studio together for the first time since 1968—put their decades of experience to work, with both singing on most tunes and adding spontaneous drums and percussion from Cooder’s son, Joachim, throughout. Although this is a mostly acoustic guitar and voice affair, Ry Cooder adds electric guitar parts to several tunes including the opener “My Baby Done Changed the Lock on the Door” and an oddly reverberant and round-toned, “Packing Up Getting Ready To Go.” Recorded by Martin Pradler at Temple of Leaves in Altadena, CA. and Wireland in Chatsworth, CA, the only flaw in this project is that is was recorded as Mahal says, “old school” in less-than-ideal conditions “in the front parlor of a fine n’ vintage welcoming old home!” This results in a recording quality which is often distant and unbalanced. The McGhee/Terry classic, “Pick a Bale of Cotton” (“jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton”) gets a snappy, gently rocking’ take while “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee” (written by McGhee’s brother, Stick) with Cooder on slide guitar and Mahal singing and playing harmonica gets appropriately funky and low down. Mahal does his best barrelhouse piano imitation on “Deep Sea Diver.” This set’s best-known tune, “The Midnight Special” gets a group singalong led by Mahal’s harmonica. The closer, Mississippi John Hurt’s “I Shall Not Be Moved” is a just-right finale to an easygoing set where ambition is sidelined in favor of heartfelt results. It’s all what Mahal calls “Big! Big! Big fun … loose ‘n’ tight, crazy ’bout the/that rhythm, ’cause it’s ragged but right!” An album cover design reminiscent of original bare bones blues albums of the late ’50s/early ’60s completes this salute to disappearing but still vital American roots music. – Robert Baird
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