Into the Purple Valley

Into the Purple Valley is Cooder's second studio album and the one that broke him through. It draws mostly on older American music, with songs by Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash and Jesse Stone alongside calypso and gospel numbers. It opens with How Can You Keep on Moving (Unless You Migrate Too), written by Agnes "Sis" Cunningham about the Okies who were unwelcome when they went west to escape the Dust Bowl, to which Cooder gave a rousing but satirical march accompaniment.

Cooder gave the cowboy ballad Billy the Kid a tempo change, and he said he first knew Tear Drops Will Fall through Wilson Pickett's version rather than the 1959 hit by Dickey Doo & the Don'ts. Van Dyke Parks played keyboards, and FDR in Trinidad was also covered on Parks's own album Discover America the same year. The front cover, showing Cooder and his then wife Susan Titelman in a Buick convertible on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, is number 12 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest album covers. Record Collector wrote that the album reached deep into tradition and reshaped neglected treasures for the post-Woodstock generation.