Album Review: My Name Is Buddy by Ry Cooder

Described on the sleeve as "another record by Ry Cooder", this unexpectedly rapid follow-up to Chavez Ravine is another epic concept album and musical excursion into vanishing America. It's epic not because of the songs (some of which feature only Cooder on guitar backed by his son Joachim on drums or the great Van Dyke Parks on piano) but because of the ideas behind the project. It revisits the styles of the 1930s and 40s - the era of Woody Guthrie, hobos, Joe Hill and American communism - and mixes all this with a series of allegorical animal stories.

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