Chicken Skin Music

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Binding: Audio CD EAN: 0075992723121 Label: Warner Manufacturer: Warner Number Of Discs: 1 Publisher: Warner Release Date: 1999-10-01 Studio: Warner
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Editorial Reviews: This 1976 effort contains some of Cooder's most compelling work and finds him re-exploring some of the fundamental influences on a musician known for remarkable eclecticism. Most notable are "Always Lift Him Up", "Smack Dab in the Middle", and a beautiful adaptation of "Stand By Me" (which includes Flaco Jimenez on accordion.) The album opens and closes with covers of Leadbelly, namely "The Bourgeois Blues" and (you guessed it) "Goodnight Irene". Also notable is a fine reworking of the traditional number "I Got Mine". --Wayne Pernu
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: My favourite Ry Cooder album Comment: This is the most essential of a list of essential Ry Cooder albums. If you only ever buy one of his CDs, make it this one. I wore the vinyl out and had to buy it again and then I had to buy the CD. Someone borrowed the CD, they moved and I never got it back so I had to buy it again. The playing is immaculate, it is simply wonderful music. The Mexican influences are great and really bring an extra dimension. This is the culmination of everything RC did before and overshadows everything he has done since. Buy this album. Customer Rating: Summary: Ry at his best Comment: Ry Cooder at his best. A superb CD - one of my absolute favourites. 'He'll have to go' - better than the original. 'Yellow Roses' - a wonderful rendition. The best ever Ry Cooder album. Listen and enjoy! It does not disappoint. Customer Rating: Summary: Class still shines 30 years on Comment: I first heard this on tape in 1988 when it was already 14 or so years old. I loved it immediately and still love it today. Cooder is a master of anything with strings and frets, and he has assembled a great bunch of musicians around him for this album of familiar and occasionally less familiar American folk and blues standards. 'Goodnight Irene,' 'He'll have to go,'and 'Stand by me' are probably definitive versions, though 'yellow roses' does not really work for me. Still, you can forgive one slightly poorer track on an album on which most are outstanding. 'Always pick him up' may be a bit maudlin and even sexist by today's standards, but it's still a brilliant song. I'v heard most of Ry's other albums from this period, and while they are all good, this one remains, for me, the best of the bunch. Scottish Amazon users might remember that track 2 'I've got mine' was used in Tennents Lager TV promotion in the late eighties. But don't let it put you off - the music is much better than the lager! Customer Rating: Summary: Skilful Blend Comment: The rediscovery of a rich indigenous American musical history didn't begin with O Brother Where Art Thou, though it gave a timely boost to an undervalued genre. Somehow the blues and folk archives of Alan Lomax and Harry Smith, and music handed down through families over generations and kept alive, needed to be woven into a whole that was both true to a tradition and yet contemporary. Among the honourable few who attempted such a synthesis were the Band, Neil Young and Ry Cooder. Ry Cooder toured his Chicken Skin Music band after making this album and if you saw it you probably will remember a Whistle Test concert for UK television in 1977. Ry Cooder had assembled an extraordinary orchestra, uniquely combining the Tex-Mex accordion mastery of Flaco Jiminez with the Hawaiian slack key guitar maestros Gabby Pahinui and Atta Isaacs to perform traditional minstrel and gospel songs, soul ballads, Leadbelly and Ray Charles covers and standards such as the wonderful He'll Have To Go, and Chloe. The result is a skilful blend that is not dry or academic but designed for dance and entertainment Customer Rating: Summary: Cracking Comment: Ry Cooder is probably best know to contemporary music buyers as the manbehind the Buena Vista Social Club, which was an unexpected runaway hit afew years back. Well, I say unexpected, but not so if you've been payingattention to his output over the last 30 years. This CD is a simmilar ideato Buena Vista - get a bunch of less-well know but very talented musicians- and play through some old, and somtimes long forgotten tunes. To thisend he has included the fantastic Flaco Jimenez, plus two greats ofHawaiian music: Gabby Pahinui and Atta Isaacs. The tunes on this album may be familiar to many: Leadbelly's "BourgeoisBlues" and "Goodnight Irene", plus the King/Leiber/Stoller classic "StandBy Me". There are some that will be less familiar, with "Always Lift HimUp" first recorded by the wonderful Blind Alfred Reed standing out. Thisis an accomplised, ecclectic and hugely enjoyable CD. More Reviews