Cooder is a master of the slide guitar, both acoustic and the electric. He has integrated many rock elements into his blues- and folk-based playing, and his rhythm playing is as distinct as his soloing. Cooder possesses immaculate feel, timing, and pitch, a wonderful sense of melody, and an amazing capacity to play the right notes at the right time.
Cooder has a truly unique, instantly recognizable sound, and throughout his career, his guitar skills have been in huge demand. He was a guest performer on recordings by countless top artists, and he wrote the soundtracks for seventeen movies.
Cooder also made pioneering and influential albums with musicians from India, Africa, Cuba, Hawaii, and Ireland. Most of all, he created a stunning oeuvre of 17 highly-regarded solo albums, that taken together can match that of any great A-list artist. For all these reasons, Cooder is sometimes simply called “an American genius.”
Whether Cooder’s career has come full circle, or whether he has more pioneering projects in him, remains to be seen. But with seventeen solo albums, more than 20 collaborative albums, seventeen soundtrack albums, and countless guest performances on record, there is an extraordinary amount of music to explore for any of you who are not that familiar with his work…
