So, I’m organizing all my music files here, doncha know, and mostly it’s straight forward but then you come across someone like Ry Cooder.
I’d like to be able to put him in a specific category, but I’m stymied. He sings folk songs. Some blues. There’s a jazz album (called, oddly enough, “Jazz.”) There’s a lot of Tex-Mex crossover stuff. And in some of his later albums he really rocks out.
So, I’m curious; where do you categorize him in your music library?
Also, just to open up the discussion, any other artists that are just as uncategorizable?
“Stuff that my wife likes that she would never know the name of”
Vs. the other categories I have for my music:
“Stuff that my wife likes”
“Stuff that my wife hates”
“Kids stuff that I couldn’t talk them out of buying - but that I won’t allow mixed in with my music”
His music is very easy on the ears, so it is pretty accessible to non-music-geeks (like my wife), and except for Buena Vista, non-geeks really haven’t heard of him…
I have only a few categories. I have nearly everything Ry Cooder ever recorded, and it’s all together under “Pop.” Yes, I had to bend some rules to put his Cuban work, his Malian work, his Indian work, and “Jazz” in the Cooder group.
Ry is not the only genre-bending artist. Edgar Meyer is all over the map. David Grisman spans bluegrass, jazz, folk, and what-the-hell-do-you-call-that. Mark O’Connor does session work all over country music, jazz work with Edgar Meyer, and he performs his own classical concertoes. Even Yo-Yo Ma strays from classical music into tango, jazz, and bluegrass. I don’t know what to call his Silk Road work.
I have a few artists like that, although Ulver’s the only one that comes to mind immediately. It’s not so difficult to assign a single genre to each of their albums, which works for me. I have my music organized by letter of the alphabet, then artist, then album, and use the ID3 tags to track anything else.
My categories resemble WordMan’s more than they resemble standard categories. Ry Cooder is in with the stuff that my wife doesn’t like, in the great but unpopular guitarist section, right there with Eric Johnson and Richard Thompson. My wife, God help me, likes Celine Dion.
Lordy, I knew we were kindred spirits. At one point I tried to have a real structure to my music, but it just doesn’t work that way and so I rolled with it. What’s so funny is that I am portraying myself as super-flexible here, but if you shared that perspective with my wife, she’d snort her coffee out her nose - she just doesn’t care about music the same way - which is could, 'cause I think it would be hugely difficult to have two folks in one house…something to look forward to when the kids get older…
I agree that Ry Cooder is extremely hard to categorize. As are so many of my favorite artists. My first encounter with Mr Cooder was on Taj Mahal’s first album; they’d been in The Rising Sons, one of the Great Lost Bands. Cooder does blues, folk, Latin, rock, etc. And I’ve got most of his earlier stuff. (Note to self: Look into more of the later stuff.)
Note to self: Hunt down a copy of this book that doesn’t cost $58 or more!
Cooder’s soundtrack for *The Long Riders * was very fine & atmospheric. Hey, according to Amazon, he also did the soundtrack for Streets of Fire. That featured the effing Blasters! “Versatile” is the word.
I think the only thing I have as “Uncategorizable” in my iTunes library is Wesley Willis. I’m not sure where I would put Ry Cooder, but sometimes in difficult situations like that I will classify by album instead of by artist. I don’t really like to have to do it, but sometimes it only makes sense. I think I did this with Wilco (thanks to A.M.), and unfortunately I think I just called all Ween “Alternative” because I didn’t want to start classifying by song!
I would put him in a deep well and cover it with concrete, if only for his appearance in the Buena Vista Social Club album, everytime that slide thing comes on I want to grab a gun shoot him full of holes.
