1. Poor Man’s Shangri-La
2. Onda Callejera
3. Don’t Call Me Red
4. Corrido De Boxeo
5. Muy Fifí
6. Los Chucos Suaves
7. Chinito Chinito
8. 3 Cool Cats
9. El U.F.O. Cayó
10. It’s Just Work For Me
11. In My Town
12. Ejercito Militar
13. Barrio Viejo
14. 3rd Base, Dodger Stadium
15. Soy Luz Y Sombra
Total time: 1.1 hours
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Chávez Ravine
Ry Cooder
Nonesuch
Finally: a new Ry Cooder album that’s not a soundtrack or world-music collaboration.
Sure, it’s selfish to think of it that way. But the guy’s last “regular” album was 1987’s “Get Rhythm” and a lot of fans have stuck with him over the years, hoping for another classic slide guitar record.
That said, this isn’t that record; there’s nary a slide lick. But as the cover says, it’s “A Record by Ry Cooder.” And a damn good one.
Three years ago, Cooder was asked to do some music for a documentary called “Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story.” He became so enthralled with the tale of the Mexican-American hillside community – which supposedly was razed for public housing but instead ended up as Dodger Stadium – that he made a musical narrative based on his imaginations of life there in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Cooder enlisted Chicano music patriarch Lalo Guerrero; Pachuco boogie king Don Tosti; Thee Midniters frontman Little Willie G.; and Ersi Arvizu, of The Sisters and El Chicano, for 15 tracks of conjunto, corrido, R&B, Latin pop and jazz. Songs about “cool cats,” radios, UFO sightings, J. Edgar Hoover, red scares and baseball are sung in English and Spanish, many by Cooder himself, who slips comfortably into his characters’ roles.
In the end, this could be his best solo album and soundtrack yet.
external links
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