My Name is Buddy - another record by Ry Cooder

While listening to ABC Dig Radio over the weekend I chanced to hear some tracks from Ry Cooder's latest CD and its dust-bowl 1930s feel inspired me to promptly place an order with Amazon (not released locally as yet).

My Name Is Buddy is a journey in music, words and pictures of the travels of three unlikely cohorts - Buddy Red Cat, Lefty Mouse and Reverend Tom Toad - as they meander through the west "in the days of labor, big bosses, farm failures, strikes, company cops, sundown towns, hobos and trains...the America of yesteryear."

For this recording he reunites with conjunto accordion master Flaco Jimenez and soul singers Terry Evans and Bobby King, enlists banjo brothers Pete and Mike Seeger, and receives inspired support from the Chieftains' Paddy Moloney, pianist Van Dyke Parks, and drummers Jim Keltner and (his son) Joachim Cooder.

Released by Nonesuch Records, you can hear some samples at the website and also at Amazon.

Brian Wise has a Dig Radio podcast about Ry Cooder and My Name is Buddy.

How could you resist an album with track titles such as Hank Williams and Three Chords and the Truth?

Postscript: I received the CD from Amazon yesterday and it's excellent and the packaging is fantastic with a lavishly designed built-in booklet. 17 tracks in all with quite a diversity of styles. All they need to do now is to make the animated movie! One of my favorite tracks is Footprints in the Snow, a song familiar to fans of Bill Monroe. Check it out in the podcast.