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Album Details

• Artist: Ry Cooder
• Album: My Name Is Buddy
• Label: Nonesuch
• Year of Release: 2007
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2007-03-21

Ry Cooder is the master of the slide guitar and the dirty riff, influencing everyone from Keith Richards to Randy Newman, and adding power and skronk to many a recording. In recent years, he has started to leave the session-man whiz persona aside and dig into world music, providing a history lesson over his last few records of how music from all over the world both enriched their own countries and provided spice to the huge sloppy stew of American music.
This set is a modern updating of the dust Bowl and old Union Songs of poor folk heading for California, a state which Cooder has wonderfully, and back-handedly, mythologized a lot recently, a place of hope and misery, of dreams offered and laughed at. Our traveling hero here is a red cat named Buddy, his companions Lefty Mouse and the Reverend Tom Toad. Their story is told as the struggle of the Everyman, just trying to find a new life in a new strange place. Songs like “Strike ” and “Three Chords and The Truth” are as much about ‘30’s LA as they are about America itself. “One Cat, One Vote, One Beer” is funny as hell and poignant too, in its tale of the defiance and surrender of the immigrant. The fairy tale aspect may make the message go down smoother, but it is still a hard hit, and a much needed story to be retold; it is the story of the first drunk off the Mayflower, and the next drunk to cross over from Mexico, with all their fear and hope right in your face.

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