His Name is Flathead: An Interview with Ry Cooder

With his new album, Ry Cooder completes the trilogy of records about 1940s/50s California that began with Chavez Ravine and continued with My Name Is Buddy. Complete with his own superb 53-page novella, I, Flathead explores a lost world of pedal steel guitarists and salt-flat drag racers. It also sounds fabulous. Barney Hoskyns talked to the wry Cooder about the album and the vanished California it celebrates.

*