Ostensibly a collection of Cooder's film music, the two-CD Music by Ry Cooder delivers the cinematic quality of a good soundtrack album but packs the kind of ferocious jams--featuring crack players such as John Hiatt, Jim Keltner, David Lindley, and Jim Dickinson--that you'll never hear on a John Williams score. Cooder's melancholy acoustic and electric-slide moans are a constant, though ...
Think of Ry Cooder as a musicologist who makes learning fun. A particularly nifty collection from 1974, Paradise & Lunch is solo Cooder at his best. The song selection is inspired and unpredictable: numbers by Burt Bacharach, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Bobby Womack mingle with ease. "Tattler" is a rare Ry original that happens to be one of the collection's highlights. Jazz legend Earl ...