Ry Cooder
Ryland Peter, aka “Ry” Cooder, is a musician, songwriter, film score composer, and record producer. While he’s a multi-instrumentalist, he’s best known for his slide guitar work. Not to mention his collaborations with traditional musicians from around the world. Cooder’s solo work ranges between many different genres. Throughout his career, he’s played with John Lee Hooker, Captain Beefheart, Ali Farka Touré, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Randy Newman, David Lindley, The Chieftains, The Doobie Brothers, and Carla Olson & the Textones (on record and film). Ry’s playing can be categorized as a wonderful combination of American folk and blues. He once described his playing style as “Hawaiian slack-key guitar”.
Ry Cooder
Curtis Mayfield
One of American soul’s finest singers, songwriters, and producers, Curtis Mayfield was a quietly influential artist. His gentle fluid melodies had a serious impact on Jimi Hendrix. In the 1970s, Curtis went on to reinvent his playing for a solo career, building his new music around the flickering funk rhythms and spare, gestural, wah-wah-inflected lead parts heard on his Superfly soundtrack as well as hits like “Move On Up”. The smooth chord sequences were difficult for other musicians to imitate, partially because Mayfield played almost exclusively in an open F-sharp tuning. The reason he did this was that he taught himself to play, and simply never changed it. He said it used to make him proud since no matter how good a guitarist was, when he grabbed Mayfield’s ax, he couldn’t play it.
Curtis Mayfield
