Ry Cooder: Bop Till You Drop : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

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Ry Cooder's changing courses again. In the past, he's mounted expeditions across the Tex-Mex border, to the Hawaiian islands and back into Prohibition jazz. Now he's coming around closer to home once more. This new record is all R&B in the free-floating style of earlier excursions like "School Is Out" (from the Showtime live album), "Dark End of the Street" (on Boomer's Story) and "Money Honey" (from Into the Purple Valley). I figure Bop till You Drop for something pretty close to sensational, but, like all Cooder LPs, it's so full of surprises and left-field humor it may keep you off balance for a little while.

Part of the reason for this is Cooder's own unpredictability and adventurousness. There's never any telling how he's going to come at you from one record to another. There are some constants, of course: the peerless musicianship, the whistle-clean and sunburstvivid production, a certain kind of easygoing funk that seems as simple as a shrug when you hear it but comes as hard as an apology when you're trying to lay it down in a studio. The musical territory Cooder passes through is tough to reckon, even when it's been charted. Sometimes, as with his Hawaiian explorations, he moves right off the map.

Cooder has endured the same fate as many originals. His struggles to avoid categorization have resulted either in critical confusion or in a frenzy to nail him down once and for all. He's been dealt many cards of identity: blues acolyte, lapsed folkie, archivist, revisionist, eccentric. In one way or another, at one time or another in his career, most of these labels have pertained. But they'll do you as much good in dealing with Bop till You Drop as a bunch of Burma Shave signs will in guiding you through the Holy Land.

It's pretty much assumed about Cooder that, because of his folkie past, he's some sort of zealot for authenticity. And that, because of his heated disinterest in most contemporary rock music, he's some kind of purist playing his lonely bottleneck to lead us through the wilderness. Bop till You Drop is resoundingly unauthentic, if your understanding of authenticity means imitation and duplication. (Leave that to George Thoro-good, Robert Gordon and the students in the blues-guitar seminars.) Cooder's after an approximation of the feeling and the texture of the originals. But what he hears in them is so unique that knowing his sources (which, on this LP, run from Arthur Alexander and Elvis Presley to Ike and Tina Turner and Howard Tate) is of no particular advantage to the listener. Cooder recasts these songs in such a radical fashion that he almost reinvents them.

When Ry Cooder talks about going for a Stax/Volt sound — as he has in relation to Bop till You Drop — he doesn't mean stalking Booker T. He wants that texture of informal dynamism, the unruffled intensity of the groove, but, finding it, he wants to push it further so it stands fresh on its own. Cooder's been setting himself this goal off and on since "Money Honey" and "Teardrops Will Fall," the Dickey Doo and Dont's tune from Into the Purple Valley. This time around, he's got it knocked. From the sweet syncopation of the opening bars of "Little Sister," with the strong structuring of Jim Keltner's drums and Tim Drummond's bass, plus the quick capering of David Lindley's guitar matched against Cooder's witty arabesques and sardonic vocal, it's clear that Bop till You Drop is not only a record that's different, it's a record that makes a difference.

Cooder touches down with some heavy gospel inflections ("Trouble, You Can't Fool Me") and some rueful blues ("The Very Thing That Makes You Rich," which, like Paradise and Lunch's "Fool for a Cigarette," was written by Sidney Bailey, a Memphis cabdriver), and he never shorts the humor. "Go Home, Girl" and "Down in Hollywood" are accounts of hard luck, bad times and evil doings, shot through with the artist's fresh-minted brand of wit, which spins and sinks like a good spitball and always threatens to steam right past you. "Don't You Mess Up a Good Thing" is a feisty, lowdown, battle-of-the-sexes duet with Chaka Khan, full of well-turned rough edges, while Cooder's instrumental version of "I Think It's Going to Work Out Fine" takes the sweet growl of the Ike and Tina Turner original and sets it against some easy, sexy self-assurance. Ike and Tina made this number into a toe-to-toe at midnight, but Cooder's version is full of relaxed and low-slung afterglow.

Bobby King, the great backup singer that Ry Cooder has been working with since 1973, turned him on to Bop till You Drop's finale, "I Can't Win," a tune originally recorded by the Invincibles. Cooder lets King take the lead vocal, and King's soaring voice, with its church roots and street inflections, joins with the aching eloquence of Cooder's guitar to end the LP on a summit of highflying soul.

"I Can't Win" is so strong, and so good, that it not only sets a lot of memories stirring (Sam Cooke, Ben E. King—yes, Bobby King has that kind of power) but also ought to put to rest one other impression of Cooder: that his albums are sort of low-key and affable but, somehow, dispassionate. It's true that every cut on a Cooder record is not like a slice out of a vein, and every song doesn't represent high-stakes, life-or-death combat. That's one kind of greatness. Ry Cooder's got another — quieter, certainly, and maybe wiser. His gift reminds me a little of Jean Renoir's. Renoir's movies and Cooder's music share a generosity of spirit, the power of gentleness, and a kind of subdued but pervasive humanity that enhances all it considers. And graces all who receive.