A biography for Ry Cooderhasn’t been written yet.
“You have to be able to improvise and respond to what's going on around you. Then you might get a good piece of work done.”
“When the real world intrudes on your musical fantasies, I get put out.”
“I had a lot of luck in meeting great musicians who were kind enough to show me things.”
“Some people have career plans, long-range career plans. I don't know anything about that. I'm no good at it.”
“Politics runs on power and money and on ignorance.”
“I like classical music. I especially like the French composers: Ravel in particular. Debussy. That's so soothing in a nervous world.”
“Being the front guy is a hard job.”
“To me, the essence of the music is the most important thing.”
“Who does this, at age 71, try to put a tour together from scratch? I have to say it's scary at times. But I like a challenge 'cause it keeps you on your toes.”
“To me, the Internet is a big scam.”
“I didn't come from a very rigid background, where there's a clan or a tribe or a religion.”
“I used to sneak gospel tunes into my old records, just as kind of a personal thing.”
“I always loved country gospel from back when I was a teenager in high school and started listening to bluegrass quite a lot.”
“On any given day, if I play the guitar, I can put myself somewhere. I always thought, 'This is the way you go.' It's like a magic carpet, see?”
“It's good to see more young people playing instruments.”
“The blues is so expressive - nostalgic but not sentimental, mournful but not pathetic, so humble and close to the earth. It's a nuance-filled thing.”
“If you're taught to hate and fear a people or a country, and it works, it's because of your ignorance of that country. You have no contact with it, nor do you know what you're hating and fearing.”
“Sure, immigrants will do work that no-one else will do. There was even a movie about it - 'A Day Without Mexicans.'”
“The biggest inspiration I had was to take norteno soul music and fuse it with Mexican music. It was my great big idea to do that.”
“I can't help what people write or think. If somebody thinks I'm a serious archivist, they're wrong. That's been a problem. It's a shame people take that attitude, because it affects how they listen to the music. It's a big mistake to treat any pop music that way.”