Cooder first attracted attention in the
1960s, playing with
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, after previously having worked with
Taj Mahal in The
Rising Sons.
He was a guest
session guitarist on various
recording sessions with the
Rolling Stones in
1968 and
1969, and Cooder's contributions appear on the Stones'
Let It Bleed (mandolin on "
Love in Vain"), and
Sticky Fingers, on which he contributed the slide guitar to
"Sister Morphine". During this period, Cooder joined with
Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, and longtime Rolling Stones
sideman Nicky Hopkins to record "
Jamming with Edward". Shortly after the sessions, Cooder accused Keith Richards of musical plagiarism, but has since refused to comment on his accusations. Cooder also played slide guitar for the 1970
movie, Performance, which contained
Mick Jagger's first
solo single, "Memo from Turner" on which Cooder played slide guitar. The
1975 Rolling Stones
compilation album Metamorphosis features an uncredited Cooder on
Bill Wyman's "Downtown Suzie", which is also the first Rolling Stones song played and recorded in the
open G tuning. Ry Cooder is credited on
Van Morrison's critically acclaimed 1979 album,
Into the Music for slide guitar on the song, "Full Force Gale".
Throughout the
1970s, Cooder released a series of
Warner Bros. Records albums that showcased his guitar work, to some degree. Cooder has been compared to a
musicologist, exploring bygone musical
genres with personalized and sensitive, updated reworkings of revered originals. Cooder's '70s albums (with the exception of
Jazz) do not fall under a single
genre description, but — to generalize broadly — it might be fair to call Cooder's self titled first album
blues; Into the Purple Valley,
Boomer's Story, and
Paradise and Lunch,
folk +
blues; Chicken Skin Music and
Showtime, a unique melange of
Tex-Mex and
Hawaiian; Jazz,
1920s jazz; Bop Till You Drop '50's
R&B; and
Borderline and
Get Rhythm, eclectic
rock based excursions. Cooder's 1979 album
Bop Till You Drop was the first
popular music album to be
recorded digitally. It yielded his biggest
hit, an R&B
cover version of
Elvis Presley's 1960s recording
"Little Sister".
Cooder has worked as a
studio musician and has also scored many
film soundtracks, of which perhaps the best known is that for the 1984
Wim Wenders film
Paris, Texas. Cooder based this soundtrack, and the haunting title song
"Paris, Texas" on
Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)", which he described as "The most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music." His other film work includes
Walter Hill's The Long Riders (1980),
Southern Comfort (1981),
Brewster's Millions (1985),
Last Man Standing (1996), and
Mike Nichols' Primary Colors (1998). Cooder also dubbed all guitar parts of Ralph Macchio in the 1986 film
Crossroads except for the final composition with which Macchio wins the guitar duel.
In recent years, Cooder has played a role in the increased appreciation of traditional
Cuban music, due to his collaboration as
producer in the
Buena Vista Social Club (1997) recording, which was a worldwide hit.
Wim Wenders directed a documentary film of the musicians involved,
Buena Vista Social Club (1999) which was nominated for an
Academy Award in 2000. Cooder worked with
Tuvan throat singers for the score to the 1993 film <a class="externalLink" href="
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107004/Geronimo:">An American Legend</a>. Cooder also stepped in for the recording of the slide guitar parts in the
1986 film
Crossroads, a take on the infamous tale of the blues legend,
Robert Johnson.
Cooder's solo work has been an eclectic mix, taking in
dust bowl folk, blues, Tex-Mex, soul, gospel, rock, and almost everything else. He has collaborated with many important musicians, including
The Rolling Stones, Little Feat, Trevor Whittaker, Captain Beefheart, The Chieftains, John Lee Hooker, Pops and
Mavis Staples, Gabby Pahinui, Flaco Jimenez and
Ali Farka Toure. He formed the
Little Village supergroup with
Nick Lowe, John Hiatt, and
Jim Keltner.
In 1995 he performed in
The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True a musical performance of the popular story at Lincoln Center to benefit the
Children's Defense Fund. The performance was originally broadcast on Turner Network Television (TNT), and issued on CD and video in 1996.
His 2005 album
Chávez Ravine was touted by his
record label as being "a post-World War II-era American narrative of “cool cats,” radios, UFO sightings, J. Edgar Hoover, red scares, and baseball" — the record is a tribute to the long-gone Los Angeles Latino enclave known as
Chávez Ravine. Using real and imagined historical characters, Cooder and friends created an album that recollects various aspects of the poor but vibrant hillside Chicano community, which was bulldozed by developers in the 1950s in the interest of “progress;”
Dodger Stadium ultimately was built on the site. Cooder says, “Here is some music for a place you don’t know, up a road you don’t go. Chávez Ravine, where the sidewalk ends.” Drawing from the various musical strains of Los Angeles, including conjunto, corrido, R&B, Latin pop, and jazz, Cooder and friends conjure the ghosts of Chávez Ravine and Los Angeles at mid-century. On this fifteen-track album, sung in Spanish and English, Cooder is joined by East L.A. legends like Chicano music patriarch
Lalo Guerrero, Pachuco boogie king
Don Tosti, Three Midniters front man Little Willie G, and Ersi Arvizu, of The Sisters and El Chicano.
His next record was released in 2007. Entitled
My Name Is Buddy, it tells the story of a cat who travels and sees the world.
My Name Is Buddy was accompanied by a booklet featuring a story and illustration (by Vincent Valdez) for each track, providing additional context to Buddy's adventures.
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