Base/Bass: Ry Cooder's Chavez Ravine

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File under: Songs that reference baseball

Ryland P Cooder has always gone out of his way.
Gone out of his way to promote music that most others would not. See his JAZZ album that includes non-traditional instruments such as: cimbalo, tuba ...  See various songs from Into the Purple Valley, Paradise and Lunch, Chicken Skin Music, Bop Till You Drop

Gone out of his way to bring back music that others forgot. Hawaii, Carribean ...

Gone out of his way to speak up for others who had only a small voice. (How's about Down in Hollywood, for that perspective?) Then there's the Buena Vista Social Club project that -  in and of itself  -revived an entire genre of music.

Among the issues he has raised (because raising issues through his music is what he does) is the <Chavez Ravine> story.

Now .. you're about to ask what the relation to the theme is?
<3rd Base, Dodger Stadium> is about BASEball, because the Chavez Ravine area was torn up by eminent domain in order to build the baseball stadium, and its mostly Latino residents were left out in the open - the land eventually ending up as the ball park.

Cooder's song highlights one of the displaced residents who eventually ends up with a job tied to the new ball park venue: parking cars around the stadium. (His house was 3rd base, folks!)  But, at least in Cooder's version he takes it with a grain of salt, without the kind of chip on his shoulders that you and I might have had...                                      

The song relates how his home was located at the spot where 3rd base ended  up. He lost his home, but found work right there all the same.


Muy Fifi from that album:

The Accordion: Flaco Jimenez

 

 

Buy "The Best of Flaco Jimenez"

 

Ry Cooder is the kind of eclectic musician that would include an accordion from time to time. He also would include a tuba, and you can hear them both in on his 1976 Chicken Skin Music album. Among other unusual instruments that he has included are the cimbalom, the tiple, the bajo sexto, the laud, the mandola - many of which he himself plays.

Since way back in the Chicken Skin Music days, his go to man for the accordion has been Flaco Jimenez. Jimenez also plays on the 1994 Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Jimenez has played with David Lindley - kind of from the Ry Cooder camp. Or with Los Lobos because, of course, the accordion features heavily in Mexican music.

The paring of Mexican & accordion has a curious and circuitous history. A PBS show called Accordion Dreams relates how the ostensibly German accordion made its way into Mexican music via German settlers moving to Texas in the mid 18 hundreds. The Tejano music which resulted is a mix of polka inspirations and Mexican band. That's a simplification, of course. Mexican music includes all sorts of styles, but the accordion does seem to have been brought that far by Texas Germans. It's also a simplification to call it accordion music: there are several different types of accordion.

 

If all you came here for is the accordion, you can cut to Jimenez's solo at about the 7 minute mark.