Subtitled “another record by Ry Cooder” My Name Is Buddy is the second album in a planned trilogy in which Cooder searches for the old weird America that the guitarist knows is still there, buried somewhere under our modern society. Several reviewers have commented that the first three or four tunes give the impression of the album being a children’s story. Well, if it’s the children of Woody Guthrie … maybe. This is a concept album like Chávez Ravine before it. Instead of taking on eminent domain, this time Cooder champions the old Leftist philosophy that influenced the old songs he dug up for his first few albums way back in the ’70s. And this time he has written most of the songs himself.
Cooder has never been a songwriter. In all his albums (until Chávez Ravine) I think there was a total of only two or three songs that he wrote (or added to) save for 1982’s The Slide Area, which most folks would admit was his weakest effort. There’s no denying that his arrangements and adaptations were major and his skill at organizing someone else’s notes was extraordinary. And it’s this skill that shapes the new songs. You will hear echoes on every tune of songs long past, songs all but forgotten. Guthrie tunes, polka, a little conjunto … in fact, listening to My Name Is Buddy is almost like listening to a history of Ry Cooder’s past. It’s our past, too.
His fans have been waiting for him to make a real followup to 1987’s Get Rhythm for, well, 20 years. He detoured into film work and the grand Cuban adventure that was The Buena Vista Social Club. Then Chavez Rávine … a record by Ry Cooder found him singing again and working with North American (and Central American) song forms. But he was playing that old rock ‘n’ roll again; after all, he covered “Three Cool Cats,” didn’t he? I would argue that Buddy finally represents that “next” album. And that he admits it by calling it “another record by Ry Cooder.”
The idea is that Buddy the red cat is on the road with his “Suitcase in My Hand.” His friends include a mouse named Lefty and the Rev. Toad (a toad.) It’s Depression USA, the ’30s, just like in the songs we all admired from Cooder’s early album. Cooder’s originals speak of the working man and his trials. Cooder has said in interviews promoting this album that he can’t sing about riding the rails, but when the songs are written in the voices of characters he can say whatever the character would say. It’s a bit like a rock opera. We might have thought the concept album had gone the way of the dodo, but in Chávez Ravine and now in Buddy Ryland P. Cooder has breathed new life into the concept of concepts.
The music harkens back (in large part) to the songs of Woody Guthrie, Ramblin’ Jack, Cisco Houston and Pete Seeger. Pete makes an appearance in the lyrics of one track, and plays on another. Mike Seeger, Van Dyke Parks and long-time Cooder pal Jim Keltner also appear, but the music is really centred on Ry Cooder’s guitars. Acoustic fingerpicking, bottleneck, raw raunchy electric or abstract jazz, it’s all here. And Keltner adds his magic at the drum stool (with assistance from Cooder’s son Joachim).
It’s been called a “parable of radical imagination” which pretty well sums it up. Buddy travels around the U.S. with his pals, witnessing labour strife, jails, poisonings, a bit of kindness, and the fellowship of a union meeting. Ahh, the good times. “Green Dog,” the jazzy freeform song that is the halfway mark, brings back Cooder’s interest in UFOs, which surfaced in the ’80s with “UFO Has Landed in the Ghetto” (from The Slide Area) and reappeared in his last album, Chavez Ravine. Must be the swamp gas in Santa Monica!
Ry has written a little scenario to accompany each track, and the deluxe packaging also provides a drawing by Vincent Valdez for each song. It’s a classy and well-made package. “Another record by Ry Cooder”? Just one more in a series. He’s finishing work producing Mavis Staples new album (due in April), he produced an album six months ago for his son’s band Hello Stranger and word is he’s already begun the followup to Buddy. Maybe it should be My Name is Busy!
(Nonesuch/Perro Verde, 2007)
