Excellent
William R. Nicholas | Mahwah, NJ USA | 04/03/2010
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Here is a very cool experience. You buy and play and album. You love it but what makes it even better is when you don't know the genre label to place on the music
Not that genre really matters: now more than ever these are just marketing ploys used by salesman and radio programmers--"Not only does Captain American Idol use rock, he takes soul and makes a special sound all his own."
Well teenypants, if you buy CDs this way, I also have some armpit hair remover I'd like to sell you. It leaves you fresh, sexy, and has a classic sound, but made for today.
People did not always care about genre, and real hardcore listeners still don't. Which brings us to Don Cooper.
Don's main instrument is a acoustic guitar, and yes, Cooper emerged in the late 1960s--to all too few. But his work sounds nothing like hardcore folk by Phil Oachs, it is not pop folk like Joe South, and it is not akin to English amazements such as Fairport Convention
A track called "Blueberry Pickin'" from this set, a comp drawing from four Cooper albums, is a great window into his music. He starts with a light easy strum and his affable vocal, singing about grabbing said fruit, on a Sunday. This is pretty straight--nice and clean, no sap--but just as you nest in, Cooper starts doing funky comps. Up flies a saprano sax solo--a jazz one, not a light FM line--and the track lifts into chromatic changes. Cooper keeps comping, his voice leading you smooth through the jazz. He scats, and this too runs like honey
This is all done on his hollow body six string, and his ability, on all the tracks, to take basic folk instrumentation and turn it into music far more dynamic and far less predictable is uncanny. Electric pianos, great bass playing, all the touches that made music of this era so individual to each artist in the era pop when you least expect, you your head turns with Don's gentle yet potent surprises.
Andy Votel put this out. Why do I take that as a given?"
Track Listings (15) - Disc #1