RY COODER
Cadogan Hall, London, October 18 Guitar legend serves up a feast at his first London solo show in decades
With age his voice has developed into a wondrously ripe instrument
IT does, indeed, feel like the return of the prodigal son. After decades spent adventuring in world music, then reinventing himself as an engagingly eccentric raconteur on LPs such as My Name Is Buddy, 2018 was the year that Ry Cooder released his best album in more than 30 years and returned to the motherlode of classic blues and R&B songs with which he made his name. His first London concert as a solo artist in three decades is a celebratory occasion in which the fatted calf is metaphorically killed, roasted and consumed – and the elegant Cadogan Hall with its plush red velvet seats is a fittingly intimate space for the feast.
Back in the day, Cooder sold out Hammersmith Odeon eight nights in a row, and tickets were at a premium in this 900-seater hall. He clearly could have filled a much larger venue, and most of those who were lucky enough to acquire a ticket look as though they have grown up with the 71-year-old and his music. When he reprises “Little Sister” from 1979’s Bop Til You Drop, it provokes some of the most joyously arthritic jiving in the aisles ever witnessed.
Much of the set is drawn from 2018’s The Prodigal Son – and seldom has a title seemed more apt. Backed by his son Joachim on drums, Mark Fain on bass, Sam Gandell on alto and bass saxophones and a trio of backing singers known as the Hamiltones, Cooder takes to the stage, his long grey ponytail poking out from beneath his blue beanie hat, and immediately sets about peeling off glorious slide licks as in days of old.
If the vintage guitar tone remains undiluted, what has altered dramatically over the years is his voice. In his prime, Cooder was never much of a singer. He once said his singing sounded like “goose farts”, and you endured it because you knew a peerless guitar solo awaited at the end. Yet with age his voice has developed into a wondrously ripe instrument, deep and resonant, the rich patina most impressively noticeable on his old material, such as Arthur Alexander’s “Go Home Girl” from Bop Til You Drop, “Down In The Boondocks” from Borderline and Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “Jesus On The Mainline” from Paradise And
Lunch. Where he struggled in his youth to replicate the gravitas of his blues heroes, his mature voice now carries the weight and authority to match them.
The songs from The Prodigal Son also showcase his seasoned timbre, from a gorgeous version of Carter Stanley’s “Harbour Of Love” to the righteous gospel-ising of the Pilgrim Travelers’ “Straight Street” and Blind Alfred Reed’s “You Must Unload.” But this is not some dry, academic exercise in the archives of antique American roots music. To Cooder, the issues the old bluesmen and itinerant folk singers sang about remain vital and alive. In “How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live”, a song first recorded in 1929, he inserts a line about Trump stealing the election. To Woody Guthrie’s “Vigilante Man” he adds a verse about 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, shot dead in 2012 by a Florida policeman, and then adlibs a hilarious rap about Brett Kavanaugh.
His own parable-like “Jesus And Woody” is introduced with a rambling anecdote about Guthrie being in heaven “where there’s a little nightclub where all the steel guitar players get together”. Cooder would go right on up there, he adds, “but I have a little business to take care of down here”.
The emotional currency and the historical sweep of the set seems perfectly calibrated, too, the reverential gospel songs offering balm from the troubled chronicles of the downtrodden working man, stretching from the Great Depression to the present day. “See you next time, or in heaven, whichever comes first,” he says at the end. Judging by their beaming smiles, many of the audience feel like they're already there.