hi, i was reading in the recent mojo (UK) , in a feature on Ry Cooder, i cant remember exactly what it was, maybe just a caption or something, but it said the stones, or keith i guess, learnt to use open tuning because of playing with ry cooder, and that honky tonk woman is his riff, and they stole it - is this true?

its a damn cool riff, although he seems pretty sucky, musically i mean, i was hoping he'd be interesting because i like the buena vista social club album and world music and he's interested in it, but he sounds kinda crap, what should i listen to of his?

Keith has never hesitated to acknowledge Cooder's influence. But the idea that he, Cooder, wrote the HTW riff is just industry gossip. The germ of the Keith riff — the I-IV-sus thing, fundamentally — was present as early as "19th Nervous Breakdown." "Street Figthing Man" has it, too, and that was pre-open-G.

wasn't cooter on the DUKES OF HAZZARD?

Keith doesn´t remember his first LP he bought,but remembers first one he stole!

Zack wrote on Feb 13^th, 2009 at 7:51am:


Cooder is great, take nothing away from him; you can hear lots of Keith-y moments on "Paradise and Lunch," for instance. But there's nothing nearly as crystallized as HTW. That's Keith's genius: He assimilates and economizes. Like I said above, Keith was well on his way to developing the Keith Style before he met Cooder and Taj Mahal.

On a personal level, there's nobody more humble about claiming orginality than Keith. You rarely hear him boast about his technique, aside from the odd "I am the riff-master" one-liner.

homesickjameswilliamson wrote on Feb 11^th, 2009 at 6:56pm:




Good luck finding a better guitarist on the planet.

out of the 28 Cooder cd's I have, I'd say the best is all of them

tookthatname wrote on Feb 15^th, 2009 at 4:01pm:


Very helpful.  

Actually, thats the kind of artist he is. He really doesn't have a "this is his best" album.

I'd say he's a great guitarist, and the perfect sideman.

But kinda like Nils Lofgren*, MT, and others of that are "great when in a band, but maybe shouldn't be the leader of one" type, he's never pulled together "the perfect" album. There's always some weak spot, But saying that most of it has been pretty darn good.

Now if the question were "what cd to start with", I'd probably say "Paradise and Lunch" or "Chicken Skin Music" wouldn't be bad places to start.


* not counting Nils Lofgren - Nils Lofgren. He did pull it all together once