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LOS ANGELES - It was more than 50 years ago but Ry Cooder remembers it like it could have been last week; he was 8 years old and Johnny Cash came on the radio singing "Hey Porter." Musician Ry Cooder poses alongside a custom-built ice cream truck commissioned by him and featuring a mural of Los Angeles' Chavez Ravine by artist Vincent Valdez, at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, Thursday, July 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) A third-grader with a guitar was hooked. Cooder knew he had to head up to "Big River" himself. Or over to Folsom Prison or down to Jackson, Miss., or anywhere else Cash was singing about. But his parents balked at even taking him across town so he could hear people like steel guitar great Speedy West or Spade Cooley, the original king of Western swing. "I'd ask my dad, 'What's that? Where... [read full story]
