release date: Dec. 1970
format: digital
[album rate: 2,5 / 5]
producer: Van Dyke Parks, Lenny Waronker
label: Reprise Records - nationality: USA
Studio debut album by Ry Cooder is a blues rock, roots rock, and an americana album, though, I find that the blues element is the most dominant genre here. It's not bad not at all, only traditional blues doesn't appeal much to me. Cooder is famous for mixing styles and genres in his own blend of roots rock, I just find that The Band does this better. However, the album is interesting for being released in 1970 when blues rock was almost pseudonymous with electrified rock with reminiscence of Hendrix in one way or another, and then: this has no link at all to that, but goes beyond Hendrix, the whole psychedelic rock pond, and perhaps reaches out for the very sources to contemporary artists like Hendrix: Leadbelly, Blind Willie Johnson, and the like of the earliest decades of the century.
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
