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Ry, Flathead: RY COODER (Unabridged)
SS: Were Folkways Records — Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, the Almanac Singers’ Talking Union — the first music you listened to?
RC: The first was classical music. My parents had that in the house. These friends of theirs, a left-wing blacklisted couple, had the good shit, the Folkways. Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads, Leadbelly, a lot of them.
SS: So Buddy is a return to the music you grew up on.
RC: That’s right, sure. Buddy’s union songs. The form of the music: the little string band, the New Lost City Ramblers routine. As you can see, Mike Seeger is on half the songs. I’ve known Mike a long time. I took lessons from him when I was a kid — also from one of the other Ramblers, Tom Paley. The Ramblers used to play the Ash Grove all the time. I learned a lot of songs from those guys, sure did.
SS: Mike’s not the only Seeger on the record. For someone like me, to whom Pete Seeger isn’t that far beneath Abe Lincoln in stature, it was quite a shock to know he played banjo on the record.
RC: Well, I’ve known Pete a long time, too, because I used to see Pete Seeger everywhere. I saw him when I was six, and then at folk festivals later on. It’d be just like you’d think. You’d go up to him and say, “Hi, Pete, how ya doin’?” And he would say, “Well, I’ll tell you something.” And off he’d go on a long speech. Mike, Pete and I recorded Pete’s song, about a pig named J. Edgar at Pete’s house in Beacon. Pete doesn’t travel to LA — hell, he’s pushing 90. We had lunch, and Pete wanted to talk about how there are too many people in the human race and they’re pressing down on the earth and here’s how you measure that force, and I’m like, “Man, we have to record. You’re wearing me out. Let’s play this song, and then we can get back to this.” Which he did when the tune was done. Pete didn’t understand it. He said, “What’s all this about J. Edgar?” “It’s a pig, Pete,” I said. “Well, I… I just don’t understand," he said. So I wrote out the words for him on a piece of paper. Then he understood. “Oh, I see,” he said. “This is a joke, it’s a gag.” Very literal-minded cat.
SS: Were your parents lefties?
RC: Yeah, in a funny kind of way. But my dad was scared of the FBI. There was a point when they were coming around a little too often. My mother was a Party member. She needed an authoritarian plan, and the Communist Party would tell you what to eat for breakfast. She liked that. But it didn’t work out for her very well, it wasn’t useful.
The FBI wanted her to come in and talk to them and my dad says, “I’m getting a lawyer,” and he did. It was scary. These two guys in the dark blue suits and the Ford and the hats — oh, brother.
SS: You remember it?
RC: Shit yes, how could you not?
SS: Did you ever get involved in any political causes?
RC: Not really. I’m not a marching type of cat. Suzy and I have known people who did things in Santa Monica, local things — fair housing and renters’ rights. We’ve shown up at meetings. But I’m not what you’d call an activist.
SS: Recently you said that those old union songs meant a lot to the movement at the time, and they can mean a lot to us now.
RC: Well, songs empower people. Civil rights certainly needed music on the spot, like an injection. Pete Seeger’s theory is if you sing you become unified — within minutes. It’s an amazing phenomenon. So we’d better utilize it, because we need to do something to overcome this terrible isolation of people from one another today, and the misunderstanding and the ignorance. Having said that, I’m not optimistic. Buddy’s optimistic, I’m not optimistic.
SS: Did you really spend $350,000 of your own money on Chávez Ravine?
RC: Closer to three. A good piece of change. I didn’t go about it in a very systematic way, and when you do that you end up spending too much money. But nothing is open and shut, you have to find your way.
SS: Did you make any of it back?
RC: Oh yeah, I broke even. People didn’t want to lay hands on Buddy. Chávez Ravine they liked, especially in Europe.
SS: Which is where Buena Vista Social Club took off.
RC: That’s where we first released it. And the goddamn thing sold and sold, and that’s what’s going to make it all right for us. We’re cool now, basically.