Album Review: The Prodigal Son, Ry Cooder

Since 1987’s rollicking Get Rhythm, Ry Cooder has veered from interesting collaborations with Ali Farka Touré (Talking Timbuktu) and Manuel Galbán (Mambo Sinuendo), not to mention the world-conquering Buena Vista Social Club, to more challenging political albums (from Chavez Ravine to Election Special).

Rejoice then for The Prodigal Son, a collection of spirituals and choice originals, combining the feeling of ‘Jesus Is On The Mainline’ (Paradise And Lunch), the glorious slide on his reading of ‘Dark End Of The Street’ (Boomer’s Story), and the yearning in ‘I Can’t Win’ (Bop Till You Drop).

‘Everybody Ought To Treat A Stranger Right’ and ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’ see Cooder return to Blind Willie Johnson – the slide motif borrowed from Johnson's ‘Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground’ formed the basis of the celebrated Paris, Texas soundtrack. Johnson contracted malarial fever, but no hospital would take this broke, blind, black man, so he died, badly, in 1945. Twenty-two years later, Carl Sagan included the song on the gold record launched with the Voyager probe, as a representation of the human experience. Know a better story about the power of music? I doubt it.

Cooder also reinterprets Rev. Robert Wilkins’ title song, familiar from The Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet. There’s another old story, about Keith Richards watching intently as Ry contributed to Let It Bleed and then basing every note he has played since on Cooder’s style. Apocryphal or true, The New Yorker’s Alex Wilkinson once wrote that the Stones are “trying to do with four hands what Cooder can do with two”.

Whatever, this haunting masterclass, described by Cooder as a “commentary on our ailing moral state”, is fit to stand beside his ’70s masterpieces, and reminds one why the man is so revered in the first place. Brilliant.

Record label: Caroline Distribution
Listen to: ‘Everybody Ought To Treat A Stranger Right’
Overall rating: 8/10