Ry Cooder: My Name is Buddy : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Guitarist-producer Ry Cooder has had at least nine lives as a musician, having done everything from playing on the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers to kick-starting the Buena Vista Social Club. Now he's followed up his excellent 2005 Chicano concept album, Chavez Ravine, with a concept album about a talking cat. Cooder was inspired by a mysterious photo sent to him of a cat's head grafted onto Lead Belly's body: Set in the Dust Bowl era, My Name Is Buddy is intended as a modern parable, a world where "Don't take no mice to be your friend" turns out to be bad advice. Musically, Cooder employs the pitch-perfect instrumentation that he's famous for, featuring gutbucket blues ("Three Chords and the Truth") and old-timey, Prairie Home Companion fare ("Suitcase in My Hand"). And tunes like the political "One Cat, One Vote, One Beer" prove that, at age sixty, Cooder can still get frisky.