Ry Cooder - Paradise and Lunch (1974) [MFSL Remastered 2017]

Posted By: Designol

Date: Nov. 20, 2024

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.

Such eclecticism, virtuosity, and ebullience resonate with unmatched verve on our hybrid SACD. Mastered from the original master tapes and strictly limited to 2000 numbered copies, this audiophile reissue boasts dead-quiet surfaces, superb transient response, front-to-back soundstaging, and an organic immediacy that heightens the enjoyment, character, and craft of the arrangements. Cooder's inspired guitar playing sounds tremendously lifelike, replete with proper scale, full-bodied tones, and a sense of decay that presents the trail ends of each note. Horns pop with three-dimensional detail and brassy colors. Akin to the contributions of all the all-star participants, Jim Keltner's percussion benefits from added stability and depth. Paradise and Lunch has never been more transparent.

On the surface a collection of seemingly disparate jazz, blues, spiritual, and roots songs, the diversified album comes across as a secret history of music. It remains a paragon of seamless convergence in which sonic DNA differences reveal shared traits and quilt a fabric united by feeling, reinvention, and elation. Beginning with a recast rendition of a traditional folk number, "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid," believed to be a close descendant of the group-vocal tune sung by field hands when they stacked bales of cotton, and ending with a stirring stripped-down cover of Arthur Blake's "Ditty Wah Ditty" – a show-stealing duet sent up with just an acoustic guitar and jazz icon Earl "Fatha" Hines' spritely walking-the-line piano riffs – Paradise and Lunch charms with exquisite interplay, inspirational harmonies, and innate flair.

At no point do the experimentations sound forced, artificial, or retro. Cooder transforms what initially appear to be obscurities into coherent, approachable songs that could have been recorded yesterday – or decades ago. In his world, a marvelous reggae-spiced and R&B-driven rendition of Bobby Womack's "It's All Over Now" coexists with a sanctified, harmony-based march through the gospel hymn "Jesus on the Mainline" anchored by restrained Dixieland accents and tolling bells. Another standard, albeit more modern, Burt Bacharach's "Mexican Divorce" strolls across dusty plains via gently clopping beats, shimmering Spanish motifs, and sympathetic support vocals.

Cooder also turns up the electricity a smidge for his idea of Bobby Miller's "If Walls Could Talk," a melodic snapshot of doo-wop shot through with reverb-drenched grooves. He rains funky vibes, chicken-scratch slide guitar, and churchgoing lessons down on a top-to-bottom remake of Blind Willie McTell's "Married Man's a Fool," the revision evocative of the imagination, proficiency, and blending that help make Paradise and Lunch an absolute must-own album – and now, an audiophile choice for those wished-for Desert Island trips.

Ry Cooder understands that a great song is a great song, whether it was written before the Depression or last week. Still, at the same time he isn't afraid to explore new avenues and possibilities for the material. Like his three previous records, Paradise and Lunch is filled with treasures which become part of a world where eras and styles converge without ever sounding forced or contrived. One may think that an album that contains a traditional railroad song, tunes by assorted blues greats, and a Negro spiritual alongside selections by the likes of Bobby Womack, Burt Bacharach, and Little Milton may lack cohesiveness or merely come across as a history lesson, but to Cooder this music is all part of the same fabric and is as relevant and accessible as anything else that may be happening at the time. No matter when it was written or how it may have been done in the past, the tracks, led by Cooder's brilliant guitar, are taken to new territory where they can coexist. It's as if Washington Phillips' "Tattler" could have shared a place on the charts with Womack's "It's All Over Now" or Little Milton's "If Walls Could Talk." That he's successful on these, as well as the Salvation Army march of "Jesus on the Mainline" or the funky, gospel feel of Blind Willie McTell's "Married Man's a Fool," is not only a credit to Cooder's talent and ingenuity as an arranger and bandleader, but also to the songs themselves. The album closes with its most stripped-down track, an acoustic guitar and piano duet with jazz legend Earl "Fatha" Hines on the Blind Blake classic "Ditty Wah Ditty." Here both musicians are given plenty of room to showcase their instrumental prowess, and the results are nothing short of stunning. Eclectic, intelligent, and thoroughly entertaining, Paradise and Lunch remains Ry Cooder's masterpiece.

Review by Brett Hartenbach, Allmusic.com

Ry Cooder at Allmusic
Ry Cooder at Wiki

Tracklist:

01. Tamp 'Em Up Solid (3:23)
02. Tattler (4:19)
03. Married Man's a Fool (3:14)
04. Jesus on the Mainline (4:11)
05. It's All Over Now (4:56)
06. I'm a Fool for a Cigarette/Feelin' Good (4:29)
07. If Walls Could Talk (3:15)
08. Mexican Divorce (3:57)
09. Ditty Wa Ditty (5:44)

EAC log

Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016

EAC extraction logfile from 17. July 2017, 21:49

Ry Cooder / Paradise And Lunch (2017 MFSL)

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Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 30
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
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Gap handling : Appended to previous track

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Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
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TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 3:22.74 | 0 | 15223
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8 | 27:46.07 | 3:56.62 | 124957 | 142718
9 | 31:42.69 | 5:43.48 | 142719 | 168491

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Track 4

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Track 5

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Track 6

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Track 7

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Track 8

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Track 9

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All tracks accurately ripped

No errors occurred

End of status report

–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6

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Submit result: aMW98CLINqXwfLWO4KPFrMTuGik- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
2 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
3 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
4 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
5 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
6 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
7 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
8 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
9 | (10/10) Accurately ripped

==== Log checksum 232B9B8BB759A3B9AD99E39427003015132082AA335C807AC9382D2931819E6E ====

DR log

foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2017-07-23 22:25:47

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Ry Cooder / Paradise and Lunch
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR14 -0.86 dB -19.89 dB 3:23 01-Tamp 'Em Up Solid
DR11 -2.63 dB -16.31 dB 4:19 02-Tattler
DR11 -1.74 dB -16.24 dB 3:14 03-Married Man's a Fool
DR12 -0.36 dB -15.94 dB 4:11 04-Jesus on the Mainline
DR12 -1.77 dB -16.29 dB 4:56 05-It's All Over Now
DR12 -1.16 dB -16.45 dB 4:29 06-I'm a Fool for a Cigarette/Feelin' Good
DR12 -1.51 dB -15.11 dB 3:15 07-If Walls Could Talk
DR12 -2.63 dB -18.42 dB 3:57 08-Mexican Divorce
DR14 -4.05 dB -22.41 dB 5:44 09-Ditty Wa Ditty
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Number of tracks: 9
Official DR value: DR12

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 532 kbps
Codec: FLAC
================================================================================

All thanks to original releaser

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