![Ry Cooder - Into The Purple Valley 1972]( "Ry Cooder - Into The Purple Valley 1972")
Ry Cooder - Into The Purple Valley 1972
Into the Purple Valley is the second album by roots rock legend Ry Cooder, Recorded 1971 ~ Released February 1972
Ryland "Ry" Peter Cooder [born 15 March 1947] is a US guitarist, singer and composer.
He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in blues-rock, roots music from his native
North America, and, more recently, for his collaborations with traditional musicians from
many countries.
Cooder's solo work has been an eclectic mix, taking in dust bowl folk, blues, Tex-Mex, soul,
gospel, rock, and much else. He has collaborated with many important musicians, including
The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Earl Hines, Little Feat,
Captain Beefheart, The Chieftains, John Lee Hooker, Pops, Mavis Staples, Gabby Pahinui,
Flaco Jimenez, Ibrahim Ferrer [Buena Vista Social Club], Freddy Fender and Ali Farka
Toure. He formed the Little Village supergroup with Nick Lowe, John Hiatt, and Jim Keltner.
Cooder was ranked 8th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of
All Time." A 2010 ranking by Gibson placed him at @32.
1970s
Throughout the 1970s, Cooder released a series of Warner Bros. Records albums that
showcased his guitar work. Cooder, like a musicologist or treasure hunter, explored bygone
musical genres and found great old~time recordings which he then, as a musician,
personalized with sensitive, updated reworkings. Thus, on his breakthrough album, Into the
Purple Valley, he chose unusual instrumentations and performed his own arrangements of
old Black blues and gospel songs, a Calypso, white country music songs [giving a tempo
change to the cowboy ballad, "Billy the Kid"], and ~ to open the album ~ a protest song,
"How Can You Keep on Moving [Unless You Migrate Too]" by Agnes "Sis" Cunningham
about the Okies who were not welcomed with open arms when they migrated to escape the
Dust Bowl in the 1930s ~ to which he gave a rousing-yet-satirical march accompaniment.
Cooder's later '70s albums [with the exception of Jazz] do not fall under a single genre
description, but ~ to generalize broadly ~ it might be fair to call Cooder's self titled first album
blues; Into the Purple Valley, Boomer's Story, and Paradise and Lunch, folk and blues;
Chicken Skin Music and Showtime, a unique melange of Tex-Mex and Hawaiian; Jazz,
1920s jazz; Bop Till You Drop, '50's R&B; and Borderline and Get Rhythm, eclectic
rock~based excursions.Cooder's 1979 album Bop Till You Drop was the first popular music
album to be recorded digitally. It yielded his biggest hit, an R&B cover version of Elvis
Presley's 1960s recording "Little Sister". Ry Cooder is credited on Van Morrison's 1979
album, Into the Music, for slide guitar on the song "Full Force Gale".
01. "How Can You Keep Moving [Unless You Migrate Too]" [Agnes "Sis" Cunningham] ~ 2:25
02. "Billy the Kid" [Traditional] ~ 3:45
03. "Money Honey" [Jesse Stone] ~ 3:28
04. "FDR in Trinidad" [Fitz Maclean] ~ 3:01
05. "Teardrops Will Fall" [Dickey Doo, Marion Smith] ~ 3:03
06. "Denomination Blues" [George Washington Phillips] ~ 3:58
07. "On a Monday" [Leadbelly] ~ 2:52
08. "Hey Porter" [Johnny Cash] ~~ 4:34
09. "Great Dream from Heaven" [Joseph Spence] ~ 1:53
10. "Taxes on the Farmer Feeds Us All" [Traditional] ~ 3:52
11. "Vigilante Man" [Woody Guthrie] ~ 4:15
