Listening to Slide Guitar Masters With Ry Cooder
In 1992, Cooder Shared His Views on Ten Classic Blues
In August 1992 I journeyed to Ry Cooder’s home to interview him for a Guitar Player magazine cover story. We were scheduled to spend several hours together, so in addition to my recording gear and list of questions, I brought along a cassette of ten stellar slide guitar recordings. Cooder, after all, is one of the world’s foremost bottleneck players. If we had the time, I figured, it would be interesting to hear his take on each of these songs.
Ry was amenable. We began with one of the most visceral postwar Chicago slide recordings, the Baby Face Trio’s “Rollin; and Tumblin’, Part 1.” Recorded for the small Parkway label in January 1950, this song features Little Walter on harmonica and Muddy Waters on slide guitar. Ry’s comments began while the song was playing:
Ry Cooder: “People have suggested that Little Walter is the greatest blues player on any instrument, and I’m inclined to agree. It’s just his time and his touch. The most elegant blues. The rhythm is just awesome. Muddy Waters on slide! He always played the same way; it always sounds the same. Fucking great! Jesus! [Turns off tape.]
“To me, that’s an example of somebody who transcends anything we think we know about the guitar. I mean, it could have been a one-string there, a post with a string, any of my guitars—it wouldn’t make any difference. The guy’s just playing on two strings, like the D and G strings, so that tuning must be G [open-G].
“When guys play like that you don’t feel frets and six strings and a scale length. It’s beyond construction and principles. He’s playing where he knows the notes are, and they are locking into this spirit thing of playing, the movement of the song. And he goes past the note—the note isn’t just here [points to a fret on his guitar]—because there are degrees of the note. It’s like Turkish music in some ways—there’s 5,000 notes. The great thing about this is it liberates you from these idiotic frets.
“That’s where all those old guys hear that stuff. There are nuances—no phrases come down the same. When you need a lift, you go sharp, and when you need to sour it up and make it feel a little darker, you go flat. But you don’t think about it. You just do it.
“It’s staggering to have that quality of a performance on a record, though, knowing what we know. Listen to Sonny Boy Williamson’s ‘Little Village’ with Leonard Chess—how do these records ever get made when assholes like that were running the show? It’s amazing to me. They made these records under such duress, conditions that ultimately we see around us today. They talk about slaves singing code songs—it’s hardly any different now.
“But the really amazing thing is that you can get that kind of free expression and excitement and even joy, perhaps, in a white guy’s recording studio. It takes a lot of power and amazing strength of personalities. These aren’t wimpy guys. They’re heavy-duty characters, and it’s coming out. They’re just blasting away. We’re very lucky this stuff got recorded at all. It’s a miracle that it did.
“[Restarts tape.] It’s not chord-based. You don’t feel chord in this. It’s greater than anything African. This is taken to another planet. This is the beauty of American music. Listen to those big string bends—whoa! Slap bass. It’s incredible. Nobody in Africa can do that. I mean, as great as African music is, it all comes together in this country.”
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Next: Muddy Waters’s “I Be’s Troubled,” a 1941 solo field recording made in Stovall, Mississippi, by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. At the time, Muddy was known by his birth name, McKinley Morganfield.
Ry: “Cats fighting. An argument. A little cat and a big cat. Mr. Microtone. I guess that’s what you’d have to say, finally, about Muddy. He’s Oriental in his approach.”
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Next: Robert Nighthawk’s “Black Angel Blues (Sweet Black Angel),” recorded for Aristocrat/Chess Records on July 12, 1949, with Willie Dixon on bass and Ernest Lane on piano.
Ry: “That sounds like late Tampa Red. Pretty. Standard tuning! When they do certain things it’s because they have to, because they’re in standard tuning. They can’t grab the next note [one string over], so you hear that happening. I bet you it’s all on the first and second strings. He can’t get go down, because he’s in standard. He’s very good, but he’s still in standard tuning.”
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Next: Earl Hooker’s “Anna Lee,” recorded in Chicago for Arhoolie Records on November 14, 1968, with Louis Myers on harmonica.
Ry: “We have an Elmore fancier here. His reverb is fabulous. Also standard tuning. Yeah, everybody talked about how Earl could play like a madman. Sure like to know what that guitar is. Maybe a Firebird, one of those weird carved Gibsons with beveled edges and two cutaways. He also had a weird-looking doubleneck.
“Beautiful reverb sound. Low volume. All this stuff was cut very quiet. It can’t sound like that if it’s not. No stress, open mike—that means quiet. The biggest mistake is to turn up. Then it all goes away, shrinks into the microphone. This is quiet music. Blues guys are tired [laughs]; they can’t play that loud. He used a spark-plug wrench, so I guess that’s why he gets that real sleek sound that sounds so smooth. I don’t have any good metal slides. I suspect Elmore had one too. I’ll have to get one.” [Ed. note: In our recently posted interview, Homesick James explains how Elmore made his slides. Link below.]
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Next: Elmore James, “Dust My Blues” from the Let’s Cut It album. This was recorded at J&M Studios in New Orleans in August 1955.
Ry: “Now, that’s not the Elmore sound. He’s amplified, but by something horrible. This isn’t his beautiful sound. His beautiful sound is the greatest thing in the world, but it’s only on the Chicago sides for Fire and Enjoy. And the rest of it sounds like this. Even the Fire and Enjoy songs from New Orleans and New York sound like this. He had something else he used on those. I don’t think it was his [acoustic] Kay with a pickup, because there’s no way a Kay with a pickup can sound like those Chicago sides, like ‘It Hurts Me Too.’ It cannot. I’ve been through everything, and I am sorry—it cannot.
“It’s important to play through the right stuff—here’s a case in point. It’s so wonderful, so glorious sounding. It’s stringy—the way the top string chokes out. He’s the guy. Real late. The phrasing, man, is so laid back. He’s so groovy. And how he hits the string sympathetically with his slide around the note is the best. It’s the prettiest sound.
“Ain’t no problem memorizing what Elmore plays. It’s how he doesn’t play. The killer shit is what he falls off into. It’s not the notes themselves, it’s the stuff around the notes and just that feeling that’s strictly body rhythm.
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Next: Elmore James’s “Hawaiian Boogie,” recorded in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in April 1952, with Ike Turner on piano.
Ry: “He’s falling into the piece, very comfortable. Like the way he sings, way back and so in the middle of the music all the time—in a big way. He’s like a horn player, just covering the whole thing like Ben Webster. Elmore is killer. He is just so great.
“Of course, you have to play an instrument that will let you do that. If your instrument is too good and too loud, you can’t fall into the note. It’ll jump too fast. You won’t be able to insinuate the note. The instrument will be ahead of you all the time. And the microphone has to be a certain distance from the amp for that to work.
“He was definitely a fingerstyle guy—you can’t be flat-picking bottleneck! I don’t hear a thumbpick catching, and I’ve listened to those records a lot. On the other hand, he might have used a thumbpick to get volume while playing in a nightclub with drums. I’ve been surprised by that.”
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Next: Mississippi Fred McDowell and Annie Mae McDowell, “When I Lay My Burden Down,” recorded for Arhoolie Records in Como, Mississippi, February 13, 1964.
Ry: “Fred McDowell and his wife Annie. That country way, like the old blind guy we see today, Leon Pinson. See, they play a note and then the bass strings. They don’t play them together much. That’s the convention. Play the melody and then some rhythm and then melody. McDowell is very country, and yet Elmore is from the country. So what the fuck? What are you gonna do?
“The question in my mind was always why this extreme radical difference in players, other than the fact that people are different. It just has to do with the genius of the people, how their individual expression is so heightened. And nowhere else does this happen. Everybody else in places tribal tends to do the same thing—it’s a conservative environment. You all do what you do. You jump up and down the same way, you paint your faces the same way. It’s not so much geared to the individual, except in this country, almost. Why is that?
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Next: Hambone Willie Newbern’s “Roll and Tumble Blues,” recorded for OKeh Records in Atlanta, March 14, 1929.
Ry: “This is 1929? Sure is Robert Johnson’s total trip right there. Really amazing. God, hardly any difference. He’s got that funny sound on that lick. It’s hard to do that.
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Next: Son House, “My Black Mama—Part 1,” recorded for Paramount Records, May 28, 1930.
Ry: “That’s Son House. He played slide at a 45-degree angle for dissonance, minor chords. Beautiful sound in that tuning. If you wear the bottleneck on the ring finger, you’ve got to tilt your hand just a little in order to go up. It sure sounds good. It’s great to see it done on the videos. How else you gonna know? You can’t tell from the records. You have no fuckin’ idea.” [Here’s video footage showing Son’s slide technique: Son House’s “Death Letter Blues.”]
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Last one: Casey Bill Weldon, “Go Ahead, Buddy,” recorded for Vocalion on October 21, 1937.
Ry: [Laughs at lyrics.] Hawaiian. Sol Hoopii did that stuff so good. Jesus! A master at that. Once in a while, somebody could really do it. It’s hard to play that syncopated stuff. It’s almost impossible.
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Thanks to Ry Cooder for sharing his views all those years ago!
Lots more slide stories available in Talking Guitar! Here are some related posts:
“Rollin’ and Tumblin’”: The Story of a Song
Muddy Waters: Baby Face Leroy’s Almighty “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”
Son House, Willie Brown, and Friends
“Dust My Broom”: The Story of a Song
Elmore James: “Dust My Broom” on Trumpet Records
Backstage With Mississippi John Hurt and Son House
Blues Guitar: The Origins of Spanish and Vestapol Tunings
The Gospel Blues of Blind Willie Johnson
Robert Johnson’s Best Day in the Studio
Barbecue Bob’s 12-String Georgia Blues
“You Gotta Move”: The Country Blues Roots of the Rolling Stones
Johnny Winter: The Art of Slide Guitar
Homesick James Remembers His Pal, Elmore James
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Muddy played out of a Fender Super Reverb amp. “It doesn’t matter what guitar I play as long as I’ve got that amp. Ry has said he finds the Super “too loud”….
Ry not Ty sorry! When I saw Muddy play here in Chicago he was loud…his Fender Super Reverb amp was set with volume treble and bass all on “7”! He also patted the guitar really made it thump, like Charlie Patton!