Long before recording such landmarks of film music as Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” and “Buena Vista Social Club,” or Walter Hill’s “The Long Riders” and “Crossroads,” teenage guitarist Ry Cooder put together a band with the singer Taj Mahal. The group was called Risin Sons, in homage to a song by their favorite musicians, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, a guitar and harmonica duo that in the 50s cultivated a style of blues and folk faithful to the roots of the genre, Los Risin Sons. they managed to record an album that was never released, but on Taj Mahal’s debut album for Columbia (1968), Cooder – only 17 years old – contributed his fledgling slide guitar. The two continued to be friends – and the two, each in their own way, were always interested in a kind of musical archaeology – but they never collaborated again. But in this 2022 they got together to pay tribute to Terry and McGhee’s best album, “Get on Board”, from 1952. The tribute even has the same art as the original, although this new album is not a remake, but a celebration that starts from classics like “The Midnight Special” and “My Baby Done Changed the Lock on the Door,” plus traditional acoustic blues like Blind Boy Fuller’s “Pawn Shop Blues.” Ry and Taj seem to have had a great time and it shows when Mahal concentrates on the harmonica, lashes out with a saloon piano on “Deep Sea Diver”, or when Cooder puts together remarkable counterpoints from his guitar and percussion by his son. Joachim.
–
