my name is buddy

best xmas gift i ever gave anybody (back when I was still working in rekkid stores, a decade ago): the cd reish of the anthology of american folk music, the groundbreaking archival document compiled by harry smith, the man who invented "roots music" as we know it, and released on moses asch's folkways label back in 1952. the set has a li'l bit of every kind of american music you could hear in the first half of the twentieth century, from the carter family to blind lemon jefferson, and it started a revolution that initially seemed to peak with the apotheosis of bob dylan but has had lasting repercussions that could be felt as recently as y2k, when the soundtrack to o brother where art thou? made a pop star out of septuagenarian bluegrass singer ralph stanley. the biggest kick i got out of it, tho, was hearing from my sister after the fact how into it my nieces, still tee-tiny back then, were -- they actually had favorite tracks from all this antique noise. an edjumikashun in a box, and i brung it.

over the yrs, ry cooder has established himself as a kind of walking harry smith anthology, covering the whole globe as well as 'meercuh -- most notably with the buena vista social club alb he produced, but also through his work as a soundtrack composer (paris, texas, for one) and albs like 2005's chavez ravine (an evocation of a departed chicano los angeles). it's prolly unimportant now that he was the well from which sprang almost virtually good lick keef richards played during the rolling stones' '69-'72 hot streak (gram parsons can claim the rest of 'em), or that he played the slide licks that helped karate kid ralph macchio appear to be waxing steve vai's tailfeathers in the climactic scene of crossroads. i kinda lost the cooder thread in the late '70s, when albs like jazz and bop till you drop started to sound a li'l _precious_, but i still have fond memories of his '72 alb into the purple valley, an evocation of the '30s dust bowl era that was one of the few tapes i owned when i first came to the fort and was living in the since-demolished apartments behind ridglea bank.

it was the memory of that rekkid and, um, a weakness for pictures of realistically-drawn anthropomorphic animals (probably dating back to a childhood love of the wind in the willows) that led me to cop cooder's new alb my name is buddy, a lefty depression-era parable featuring a talking cat, mouse, and toad; a pig named after j. edgar hoover; joe hill; hank williams; and much, much more. the ceedee comes packaged in a li'l storybook filled with vincent valdez's beautiful illustrations (the greening of the rekkid industry has worked out well for me in this regard; i could never read the tee-tiny print on jewelcase slicks). buddy red cat, a kind of tom joad-woody guthrie figure, leaves the farm, gets his consciousness raised by lefty mouse, and accompanied by the reverend tom toad, a gary davis simulacrum, they have numerous adventures as they make their way west. the songs have the sound of original dust bowl ballads 'n' folklorica, but they're all 'riginals, sporting lyrics that reveal that this onetime beefheart sideman has a beef in his heart about america and the history of injustice 'n' intolerance therein, tempered by a love for its ppl 'n' music.

the musos on hand include a who's who of cooder collaborators, plus a few new faces: chieftain paddy moloney; old folkniks pete and mike seeger; bluegrass daddy roland white (bro. of the late gtrist clarence); fellow connoisseur of american weirdness van dyke parks; tex-mex accordionist flaco jimenez and soul singers terry evans and bobby king (all of whom entered cooder's musical universe with the bicentennial yr's chicken skin music); and drummers jim keltner and son joachim cooder. modestly subtitled "another record by ry cooder," it's a nicely crafted little movie for yr ears, perhaps a bit too npr for some folks' tastes, but definitely something i'll be reaching for whenever i need to settle back with a cat in my lap to take a break from all the feedback.