E-Mail This Article to a Friend Soulful six-strings Ry Cooder, Mark Knopfler: True-to-life fictions BY TED DROZDOWSKI
	Related Links Ry Cooder's Web site Ted Drozdowski reviews Mambo Sinuendo, a joint effort by Ry Cooder and Manuel Galbán. Mark Knopfler's official Web site

Among guitarists, there are two breeds of bad motherfucker. There are the slashers, Billy Corgan and Dimebag Darrell and Jimi Hendrix, who come out burning almost every time. And there are the stealth players, where you don’t realize they’ve gotten under your skin until you feel a sting in the heart.

Ry Cooder and Mark Knopfler are part of the stealth camp. Cooder’s 15-song Chavez Ravine (Nonesuch/Perro Verde) chronicles the destruction of a Latino section of Los Angeles in the 1950s and the ghettoization of its working-class inhabitants. Sung in Spanish and English, the story sets moral corruption, red baiting, conspiracy, and greed against the beauty of a neighborhood culture that was stamped out in the name of urban renewal. Cooder’s excellent (as always) cast includes pachuco singer Don Tosti, Thee Midniters frontman Little Willie G., and Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo, all East LA veterans, as well as Cooder’s son and Buena Vista Social Club (Nonesuch) accomplice Joachim, an exceptional percussionist.

Cooder’s performing roots go back to the 1960s and Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, and he grew up not far from Chavez Ravine (albeit in a manicured suburb), so this LA chronicle is a natural. He’s woven some of his finest playing into the Spanglish arrangements, balancing sharply defined chords, bass notes, and crisp, uncluttered melodies in "Chinto Chinto" and using a slide to make his guitar the third voice in "Muy Fifí," a mother/daughter dialogue written by Willie G. that’s a celebration of ’50s Latino youth, beauty, and pride. But mostly he’s a driving presence whose playing is the strong, round-toned spine for his guests’ contributions.

Mark Knopfler’s One Take Radio Sessions (Warner Bros.) is the latest episode in this Glaswegian’s career-long campaign to sound distinctly American. Like so many British musicians before him, Knopfler fell under the spell of blues and the romance of the South. Listening to 1979’s "Sultans of Swing," which introduced his clean finger picking style as well as his group Dire Straits, and then One Take Radio Sessions, you’d swear he’s cultivated a drawl over the years. Even his tribute to the late skiffle king Lonnie Donegan, "Donegan’s Gone," sounds like Mississippi blues.

Knopfler has also developed an intimacy in his writing and playing. His notes remain well-chiseled, but these days he sings his post-Straits material in a whisper, and his guitar lines come out steady as a heartbeat and gently as breath. This quiet approach doesn’t always work in front of an audience of thousands. (You can judge for yourself when he comes to Bank of America Pavilion this Friday.) But it’s captivating on One Take Radio Sessions, whose eight songs (most selections from his solo release Shangri-La) Knopfler and his band recorded live in a California studio — a quick effort compared with the three years Cooder took for Chavez Ravine. Whether he’s having a private Irish wake for a "Stand Up Guy," celebrating a troubled black heavyweight ("Song for Sonny Liston"), or heading "Back to Tupelo," his voice maintains a soft edge that’s buoyed by the unhurried playing. It’s all graceful stuff plucked from the handbooks of Muscle Shoals, Chess, Sun, and Knopfler’s own imagination.

Mark Knopfler | Bank of America Pavilion, Northern Avenue, Boston | July 1 | 617.931.2000