Ry Cooder and Corridos Famosos
Live
at the Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, Aug 31-Sept 1 2011
Nonesuch / Perro Verde Records
Desmond Traynor
4/5
Ry Cooder has
apparently only released one live album previously in his career, 1977’s Show Time, which was recorded 35 years
prior to this set, at the exact same venue. San Francisco’s Great American
Music Hall, where I once saw Jonathan Richman, is like Dublin’s Olympia, only
glitzier. Jonathan described it as “my idea of a great room”, and it does lend
itself to a convivial atmosphere and audience participation, which this record
captures perfectly.
Cooder reprises four
songs from that first live set here, Gary ‘U.S.’ Bonds’ ‘School Is Out’, the
Chips Moman/Dan Penn-composed cheating classic ‘The Dark End of The Street’,
Woody Guthrie’s dustbowl warning about California as a supposed promised land,
‘Do Re Mi’, and the beautiful Mexican ballad ‘Volver Volver’, sung here by his
daughter-in-law Juliette Commagere, and given the full mariachi treatment by ten-piece
Tex-Mex brass and percussion band, Le Banda Juvenil. Cooder is also reunited
with accordion player Flaco Jimenez and vocalist Terry Evans, from the previous
outing, the former contributing mellow lines to ‘Do Re Mi’ and ‘Dark End’, the
latter joined by Arnold McCuller to duet on ‘Dark End’. The remainder of the
band includes Ry’s son (and Juliette’s husband), Joachim, on drums, and bass
player Robert Francis.
The rest of the set
consists largely of a trawl through Cooder’s back catalogue. He has always
chosen his heritage favourites sagaciously and eclectically, and here we are
treated to readings of ‘Crazy ‘Bout An Automobile’, ‘Why Don’t You Try Me’, Sam
The Sham’s ‘Wooly Bully’, the makeover of another Guthrie folk standard, into
the vicious slide guitar blues of ‘Vigilante Man’, and a tender, soulful
rendition of Leadbelly’s ‘Goodnight Irene’ as closer, with Jimenez’s accordion
and Cooder’s guitar answering each other consummately.
It’s not all nostalgia,
however, as there are two Cooder originals from his then-current album, Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down, the
intentionally absurd inverse racism of ‘Lord Tell Me Why’, and the politically
charged yet humourous ‘El Corrido De Jesse James’, a song that finds the
erstwhile outlaw looking down from heaven at Wall Street bankers and brokers,
and asking God, ‘con permisso’, for his old .44 so he can do a Robin Hood and
‘put the bonus money back where it belongs’.
For those fans who
have longed for a document of the looseness and intuitive interplay of Ryland’s
live performances, which occasionally got lost amid the fussiness of some of his
studio fare, Live in San Francisco is
just the ticket they’ve been waiting for.
Also available at: http://www.state.ie/album-reviews/ry-cooder-and-corridos-famosos-live-at-the-great-american-music-hall-san-francisco-aug-31-sept-1-2011
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