What people search:
 | Title : Paradise and Lunch
Author : Ry Cooder
Release Date : 19901025
Binding : Audio CD
Regular Price : $11.98
Amazon.com Price : $9.50
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Editorial Reviews :
Think of Ry Cooder as a musicologist who makes learning fun. A particularly nifty collection from 1974, Paradise & Lunch is solo Cooder at his best. The song selection is inspired and unpredictable: numbers by Burt Bacharach, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Bobby Womack commingle with ease. 'Tattler' is a rare Ry original that happens to be one of the collection's highlights. Jazz legend Earl Hines guests on the dapper 'Ditty Wa Ditty.' --Steven Stolder
Buyer Reviews :
Ry Cooder was like the mystery musician in Los Angeles for years. He'd break through the surface and make a dazzling appearance on stage or sparkle up somebody else's record, and then he'd fall from sight dipping back into his own projects. Other musicians just loved him because he'd practice ten hours a day and was rumored to be a walking treasure trove of all sorts of esoteric lore about one of their most favorite topics, music.
This record was like the breaking of the dawn and Ry really stretched out brightly for all to see and hear. All blended with his quirky musical sense of humor. Ry took 'It's All Over Now' back closer to the original Bobby Womack version (actually, Bobby as a member of the Valentinos). The vocals here have some elements of the 'high-preaching' style, just meaning the song is sung in a gospel style high register, a form of singing in worship that is supposed to carry the song closer to heaven.
A brief side trip into music history here: the Womack brothers were raised in a family tradition of singing and performing gospel music. The Womack brothers as young men attracted by the lure of more secular rhythm and blues music recorded as the Valentinos in the early 60's. As the story goes, when their first song became an R&B hit in 1961, their preacher dad was seriously offended and kicked them out of the house. They had to wait until 1963 for their second R&B hit, which was 'It's All Over Now' which also happened to be the last time the Valentinos made the charts.
The song became popularized quite soon, in fact the very next year when a group of relative newcomers pumped out a heavier rock and roll cover of the tune, and Ry as a studio musician in the early 70's contributed some of his own brilliance on a few tracks here and there for that same group.
You don't really need to know any of that to appreciate the song here, a delightful swirl of Latin percussion with a particularly endearing emphasis on the maraca. All combined over timbales, a few steel pans, 'cheesy' keyboard organ, tack sounding piano, warm and fuzzy electrified guitar, syncopated bass stepping into a calypso-tinged rhythm guitar, all topped off with an exuberant background chorus. A swingy piece of music and you get a bit of a buzz just listening to it. This also is a respectful treatment of the original material, much closer to the meaning in the song's original intent. Through this skilled arrangement, Ry also managed to give the song back to the people who had created the music in the first place and a new appreciative audience. That only makes it better.
Released in 1974, at the dawn of Reprise-Warners finest years as a record company, 'Paradise & Lunch' is every bit as bright and gentle as the sunny yellow and pink hibiscus on the cover, the music within bursting into one of Ry Cooder's finest efforts and a stunning achievement for him.
(by heymambo)
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