Ry Cooder summons fourth world trumpeter Jon Hassell, jazz star pianist Jacky Terrasson, and classical Indian flutist Ronu Majumdar, to a big resonant church in Santa Barbara and creates "tone-magic" – a bath in the sheer beauty of sound expressed in a kind of global, space-age Duke Ellington palette. Music without a price for an audience that can't be bought.

Ry Cooder's development as a peerless musician capable of grasping virtually any style began with his time spent with Taj Mahal and Captain Beefheart, but for all intents and purposes reaches epic proportions on Boomer's Story. With two ambitious albeit uneven studio albums behind him, the California native plunged into roles that still define him today – that of sonic archeologist and cultural historian, shaping his 1972 Reprise effort with enlightened selections carved into the bedrock of America's folk, blues, and soul landscapes.

Ry Cooder's exceptional Paradise and Lunch takes a popular precept - music as the common denominator across all languages and styles - to extremes few artists have envisioned let alone fulfilled. Considered by many diehards to be the California native's finest hour, the 1974 set unfurls with rarified levels of joyousness, ingenuity, and sophistication. A prime contender for any Desert Island list and an album that repeatedly restores your faith in the inimitable effects experienced upon listening to special performances, Paradise and Lunch is an eternal "musicians' musician" record – an adventurous, ambitious, soulful leap down roads well-traveled and paths less known.

Ry Cooder summons fourth world trumpeter Jon Hassell, jazz star pianist Jacky Terrasson, and classical Indian flutist Ronu Majumdar, to a big resonant church in Santa Barbara and creates "tone-magic" – a bath in the sheer beauty of sound expressed in a kind of global, space-age Duke Ellington palette. Music without a price for an audience that can't be bought.

After building a career providing back up vocals to some of the biggest names in rock and roots music, Terry Evans has come to the forefront in recent years as a concert headliner and recording attraction. Join Terry, Ry Cooder and friends on Puttin' It Down, the incredible follow up to Terry's critically acclaimed '94 release, Blues For Thought. Puttin' It Down is a journey directly to the center of Terry Evans soul!

American composer, musicologist and guitar legend Ry Cooder teams with North Indian musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt to create an exquisite musical realm, with both musicians playing exceptional slide guitar. Their collaboration evokes musical elements from many cultures and styles. Percussion by Sukhvindar Singh on tabla and Cooder's 14-year-old son Joachim on dumbek. This recording won a Grammy Award.

The title of Ry Cooder's Chicken Skin Music - Hawaiian slang for goosebumps - serves as a direct, simple description of the album's emotional appeal. But it barely scratches the surface of a 1976 effort that triggered an interest in "world music" a decade before the term became commonplace and a genre into and of itself. Part of a series of inimitable mid-1970s records on which Cooder ignored traditional boundaries and instigated lasting cross-cultural communication, Chicken Skin Music blends gospel, Hawaiian, folk, blues, and Tex-Mex styles into a brilliant roots stew distinguished with virtuosic playing and inspired contextual surprises. Mastered from the original master tapes and strictly limited to 2000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's hybrid SACD of Chicken Skin Music brings the brilliant instrumental textures and lively tonalities to the fore like no prior digital edition.

American composer, musicologist and guitar legend Ry Cooder teams with North Indian musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt to create an exquisite musical realm, with both musicians playing exceptional slide guitar. Their collaboration evokes musical elements from many cultures and styles. Percussion by Sukhvindar Singh on tabla and Cooder's 14-year-old son Joachim on dumbek. This recording won a Grammy Award.

My Blueberry Nights is notable not only as the first English-language film by director Wong Kar Wai but also for the acting debut of Norah Jones. It's surprising, then, that the soundtrack only includes one song from Jones, "The Story," the only new song on the set and one that Jones has stated reflects her doubts about becoming an actress. It's not appreciably different than anything else Jones has recorded to this point, a slow, jazzy ballad featuring her moody vocals and piano in a trio setting. As for the rest, it's an appealing mix of R&B (Mavis Staples, Ruth Brown, Otis Redding), jazz (Cassandra Wilson), a couple of Cat Power tunes, and the ubiquitous Ry Cooder, who always makes any soundtrack worth a listen.

Ry Cooder’s Election Special is a wake-up call as the US heads into the 2012 fall election season. On Election Special, which he produced, Cooder plays mandolin, guitar, and bass and wrote all of the songs, co-writing one with Joachim Cooder, who plays drums on the record.

Ry Cooder's I, Flathead, is the culmination of his ambitious and fascinating "California Trilogy", the last of three albums in which the singer and guitarist journeys through the real and imagined history of mid-20th century, multi-ethnic California, sampling the sounds of its barrios and byways, its nightclubs and honkytonks. He encounters the disenfranchised, the hopeful, the cheerfully strange and seriously nefarious, along with the occasional alien who races around in a souped-up flying saucer on the desert salt flats.

Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, issued between two national election cycles, is the most overtly political album Ry Cooder has ever released, and one of his funniest, most musically compelling ones, too. Cooder looks deeply into his musical past using his entire Americana musical arsenal: blues, folk, ragtime, norteño, rock, and country here. Opener "No Banker Left Behind" updates Civil War-era marching music.

With a cast of legendary Chicano musicians, Cooder recounts the story of how a Mexican-American community was destroyed to make way for L.A.’s Dodger Stadium. Rolling Stone calls it “a remarkable song cycle … a brilliant and flavorful film-noir history lesson.”

Ry Cooder’s Election Special is a wake-up call as the US heads into the 2012 fall election season. On Election Special, which he produced, Cooder plays mandolin, guitar, and bass and wrote all of the songs, co-writing one with Joachim Cooder, who plays drums on the record.