One of the most underrated guitarists of the rock era, Ry Cooder is very much a musician's musician. He has always kept a low profile despite playing on albums by some of the biggest acts of the '60s and '70s. But that didn't stop him from releasing a long string of cult-classic solo albums, filtering roots music of all kinds through his own quirky sensibility. Cooder occasionally ended up in the spotlight, though - like when he spearheaded the massively popular Cuban project Buena Vista Social Club in 1997, or when he formed supergroup Little Village with John Hiatt and Nick Lowe.