At 75 and 80 years old, the much-loved musicians have finally re-formed to pay tribute to their folk-blues heroes. They explain how old records taught them how to play – and how to live
Ry Cooder was just 14 when he first saw Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee playing live. “Just their walk to the stage was unbelievably dramatic,” he remembers. The harmonica and guitar-playing folk-blues duo were appearing at a small club in West Hollywood called the Ash Grove. “They came through the audience,” Cooder says, “and Brownie was walking with difficulty, with a built-up shoe, having had polio. And Sonny was hanging on to him, because he was blind. When you are that age everything you encounter – at least for me, in music – is a tremendous revelation. Particularly if you come from Santa Monica – a wasteland of nothingness!”
Three years later Cooder would be on the same stage, playing guitar in a blues band, the Rising Sons, that included Taj Mahal, a young singer and multi-instrumentalist who shared his tastes. They recorded an album that was rejected by the record company, but eventually appeared in 1992, by which time Cooder and Mahal were big stars. Ry had become a session musician for Neil Young, Captain Beefheart and more, then a versatile guitar hero under his own name, exploring a wide range of American and global styles (he would later travel to Havana to play a crucial role in the success of the Buena Vista Social Club), while Mahal had his own successful solo career. Both became cult heroes for re-working the blues, both worked with the Rolling Stones, both have recorded exquisite albums with Malian stars, and have earned eight Grammys between them.
