Ry Cooder is an artist who has been impossible to peg.

One project may be an affectionate, audiophile reexamination of 1920’s American jazz, and the next a recreation of 1950s dance music. He has recently emerged as a champion of Cuban and Chicano music, and is recognized by guitarists worldwide as among the instrument’s most skillful and creative practitioners.

His newest project, due this month (3/07) from Nonesuch Records, has him recording with a number of prominent old time, bluegrass and Celtic musicians. Mandolinist Roland White, banjo players Mike and Pete Seeger, and piper Paddy Maloney appear as guest artists.

My Name Is Buddy, is an allegorical concept piece, with animal characters Buddy Red Cat, Lefty Mouse and Reverend Tom Toad voicing Cooder’s dark vision of life among rural workers in the “American west of yesteryear.”

The CD also includes short stories Cooder composed for each song, illustrated by noted Texas muralist, Vincent Valdez. Depending on your political leaning, the stories may find you nodding in agreement, or rolling your eyes, but the music and production on My Name Is Buddy are up to Cooder’s high standards.

There are a few audio samples available on the Nonesuch site, with samples from each track at Amazon.com.

Pete Seeger and co-author Paul DuBois Jacobs were awarded the Schneider Family Book Award this week for their 2005 book, The Deaf Musicians. It is a story about a young musician who loses his hearing, and forms a band of deaf children at a school for the hearing-impaired.

The award from the American Library Association is for “books that embody the artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.”

The awards were announced yesterday (1/22) at the ALA annual meeting in Seattle, WA.

Some further details about the awards can be found in this 1/23 AP story.

Pete Seeger’s banjo recently ended up in the International Bluegrass Music Museum. Back in the mid 1960’s Seeger had a television show that aired on WNJU-TV in New York. 38 episodes of Rainbow Quest were aired, during which Seeger interviewed and picked with many of the artists considered leaders of the 60’s folk revival. Of interest to bluegrass fans are the episodes that included interviews with The Stanley Brothers, Doc Watson, or even June Carter and Johnny Cash.

There are 6 or 7 short clips available on YouTube for you to preview, and Amazon has DVDs available which contain two episodes each. I’m not sure which banjo of Pete’s it is that now resides in the IBMM. In the clip with Johnny and June you can see Pete playing both a fretless and a fretted banjo.

Carl Pagter recently presented Pete Seeger’s extended neck Vega banjo to the International Bluegrass Music Museum. He made the presentation during a recent trustees meeting in Owensboro, KY.

This is the same banjo that Seeger donated to Sing Out! magazine during a subscription drive in the ’70s. Pagter obtained the banjo from the estate of Rick Abrams who won the banjo from the magazine.

After the presentation was made, Kitsy Kuykendall, secretary of the board, had this to say.

He’s not a bluegrass musician, but that’s what sets us apart from other museums. We celebrate not only bluegrass, but its roots and branches as well.

Hat Tip: The Back Porch News