Ry Cooder: The Document
Touring in support of perhaps his best record, Chicken Skin Music, Ry Cooder turned in one of the most eclectic, dynamic performances in a long career back in 1976. This live radio broadcast concert, The Document, captures Cooder, his slide-playing virtuosity and a very sympathetic band in San Francisco at an early peak. The show kicks off with Cooder and his trio of female gospel singers breaking into the call-and-response, soul-stirrer, “Alimony.” One of the joys of attending a Cooder show is discovering what funky cover he will interpret next. He doesn’t disappoint here, easily gliding from the fingerpicked, solo precision of Blind Blake’s “Diddy Wah Diddy” to the soul-blues of Penn/ Moman’s “Dark End of the Street.” His Hispanic roots shine on the core classics, such as the anthemic “Volver Volver” and the aching Spanish waltz, “He’ll Have to Go.” “Chicken skin” means goose-bump-inducing in Hawaiian dialect, and Cooder’s global, bottleneck blues does just that.