Ry Cooder - Live At Ebbet's Field, Denver, Colorado, May 20th 1974, KCUV-FM Broadcast (Remastered, Live On Broadcasting) '2025

Tracks list

Tracklist:

1. Too Tight This Rag of Mine (Live) (03:19)
2. I Can Tell by the Way You Smell (Live) (02:59)
3. Blind Man in the Tear Gas (Live) (06:53)
4. Great Dream from Heaven (Live) (03:47)
5. How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live (Live) (08:00)
6. Ax Sweet Mama (Live) (07:47)
7. Floating Bridge (Live) (04:54)
8. I'm a Fool for a Cigarette / Feelin' Good (Live) (06:04)
9. Crazy 'Bout an Automobile Every Woman I Know (Live) (05:09)
10. Kentucky Blues (Live) (05:06)
11. Don't Take Everybody to Be a Friend (Live) (04:32)


 moreThe 16-year-old Cooder began his career in 1963 in a blues band with
Jackie DeShannon and then formed the short-lived Rising Sons in 1965 with Taj
Mahal and Spirit drummer Ed Cassidy. Cooder met producer Terry Melcher through
the Rising Sons and was invited to perform at several sessions with Paul Revere
& the Raiders. During his subsequent career as a session musician, Cooder's
trademark slide guitar work graced the recordings of such artists as Captain
Beefheart (Safe as Milk), Randy Newman, Little Feat, Van Dyke Parks, the Rolling
Stones (Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers), Taj Mahal, and Gordon Lightfoot. He also
appeared on the soundtracks of Candy and Performance.

Cooder made his debut as a solo artist in 1970 with a self-titled album
featuring songs by Leadbelly, Blind Willie Johnson, Sleepy John Estes, and Woody
Guthrie. The follow-up, Into the Purple Valley, introduced longtime cohorts Jim
Keltner on drums and Jim Dickinson on bass, and it and Boomer's Story largely
repeated and refined the syncopated style and mood of the first. In 1974, Cooder
produced what is generally regarded as his best album, Paradise and Lunch, and
its follow-up, Chicken Skin Music, showcased a potent blend of Tex-Mex,
Hawaiian, gospel, and soul, and featured contributions from Flaco Jimenez and
Gabby Pahinui. In 1979, Bop 'til You Drop was the first major-label album to be
recorded digitally. In the early '80s, Cooder began to augment his solo output
with soundtrack work on such films as Blue Collar, The Long Riders, and The
Border; he went on to compose music for films such as Paris, Texas, Streets of
Fire, Alamo Bay, Blue City, Crossroads, Cocktail, Johnny Handsome, and Steel
Magnolias, among others. Music by Ry Cooder (1995) compiled two discs' worth of
highlights from Cooder's film work.

In 1992, Cooder joined Keltner, John Hiatt, and renowned British tunesmith Nick
Lowe, all of whom had played on Hiatt's Bring the Family, to form Little
Village, which toured and recorded one album. Cooder turned his attention to
world music, recording the album A Meeting by the River with Indian musician
V.M. Bhatt. Cooder's next project, a duet album with renowned African guitarist
Ali Farka Touré titled Talking Timbuktu, won the 1994 Grammy for Best World
Music Recording.

His next world crossover would become one of the most popular musical
rediscoveries of the 20th century. In 1997, Cooder traveled to Cuba to produce
and play with a group of son musicians who had little exposure outside of their
homeland. The resulting album, Buena Vista Social Club, was a platinum-selling
international success that made stars of Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer, and
Rubén González, and earned Cooder another Grammy. He continued to work on
projects with his Buena Vista bandmates, including a collaboration with Manuel
Galbán in 2003 titled Mambo Sinuendo. His other work in the 2000s included
sessions with James Taylor, Aaron Neville, Warren Zevon, and Spanish diva Luz
Casal.

In 2005, Cooder released Chavez Ravine, his first solo album since 1987's Get
Rhythm; the album was the first entry in a trilogy of recordings about the
disappearance of Los Angeles' cultural history as a result of gentrification.
Chavez Ravine was followed by My Name Is Buddy in 2007, and the final chapter in
the saga I, Flathead in 2009. In 2010, Cooder was approached by Paddy Moloney of
the Chieftains to produce an album. Moloney had been obsessed with an historical
account of the San Patricios, a band of immigrant Irish soldiers who deserted
the American Army during the Mexican-American War in 1846 to fight for the other
side, against the Manifest Destiny ideology of James Polk's America. Cooder
agreed and the result was San Patricio, which brings this fascinatingly complex
tale to life. In early 2011, Cooder was taken by a headline about bankers and
other moneyed citizens who'd actually profited from the bank bailouts and
resulting mortgage and economic crisis, and wrote the song "No Banker Left
Behind," which became the first song on 2011's Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down,
an album that reached all the way back to his earliest recordings for musical
inspiration while telling topical stories about corruption -- political and
social -- the erasure and the rewriting of American history, and an emerging
class war. A month after its release, Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's fabled
City Lights publishing house issued Cooder's first collection of short fiction
entitled Los Angeles Stories. He continued to follow his socio-political muse
with Election Special, released in the summer of 2012, and in 2013 released Live
in San Francisco, his first live album in 35 years, with Corridos Famosos (son
Joachim on percussion, Flaco Jimenez on accordion, Robert Francis on bass, and
vocalists Terry Evans, Arnold McCuller, and Juliette Commagere). The ten-piece
Mexican brass band La Banda Juvenil also guested. In 2014, Rhino Records offered
an epic-scale look at Cooder's work in film scoring with Soundtracks, a
seven-disc box set compiled from his movie music of the '80s and '90s.

After playing mainly bluegrass and country-gospel songs with Ricky Skaggs in
2017, Cooder's son, percussionist Joachim, convinced his dad to cut an album of
country and blues-gospel songs. The younger Cooder arranged the 11-song set and
the guitarist fleshed them out for a band. Entitled The Prodigal Son, it
comprises eight covers including songs by the Pilgrim Travelers, Blind Willie
Johnson, Carter Stanley, and three originals. In late March, Cooder released a
preview video of an arrangement of the title track recorded live in studio. The
Prodigal Son was issued in May 2018 and followed by his first American tour in
15 years; he was backed by his own band (with Joachim on drums and percussion)
with backing vocals by the Hamiltones. That same year, he joined the cast for
Joachim's album, Fuchsia Machu Picchu.

Cooder and Taj Mahal had been friends since just after high school. They played
together in the roots, blues, and electric rock band Rising Sons during the
mid-'60s and Cooder played rhythm guitar (Jesse Ed Davis handled lead) on
Mahal's self-titled Columbia debut in 1968. In 2022 they got together again to
record Get on Board: The Songs of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee for Nonesuch. A
tribute to the Piedmont bluesmen, the duo recorded 11 songs live from the studio
floor. The material was drawn from the bluesmen's many recordings and live
performances. Joachim was the only other musician on the sessions, playing bass
and percussion. © Steve Huey



Ry Cooder - Live At Ebbet's Field, Denver, Colorado, May 20th 1974, KCUV-FM
Broadcast.rar -  329.5 MB

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