From Singer to Boxer, and Back

Sitting on a weathered wood bench in the far corner of Phillipe’s, one of Los Angeles’ oldest sandwich dens, Ry Cooder seems at ease with his casual anonymity. As families and tourists shuffle into and out of the booths around him, he cocks his glasses and glances at the woman sitting across the table. Dressed for a weekend, but with the assured glint of someone who’s known a kind of glamour, she meets his eyes and nods as he reveals how they met. It’s the kind of story you’d want to fabricate if it weren’t so serendipitously true.

In the midst of research for his dazzling East L.A. time capsule Chavez Ravine (2005), Cooder found himself seeking a female singer whose voice and story would weave naturally into the poignant arc of the record. In a photo book of old East L.A. bands, he stumbled on an image of a girl group called The Sisters. “Who’s the one in the middle there?” he asks pointing to the imaginary book in front of him, recreating the moment of discovery. “That’s the one there—I like that face.” The face, weathered only slightly by the intervening 40-odd years, flickers a flash of red before reassuming its poised gaze at Cooder.

It’s the face of Ersi Arvizu. Decades after her professional musical career had ended (and, for a time, been replaced by a foray into the world of professional boxing—both training and fighting), she was found and recruited by Cooder for Chavez Ravine. Now, for the first time ever, she’s made a solo record, Friend For Life. “In Ersi’s case, the vocal quality is unchanged from that time to this, which simply means that for the human being that contains the voice, something is still the same,” Cooder says. “Of all the things I’ve done, it’s the most unlikely.”

“I had never written a song in my life,” Arvizu says matter-of-factly, “but it just came so easy to me. I just had a lot of great stories that I went through in life, and they’re unique stories because you’re not going to find another woman that trained fighters, and had a champion—and [I] fought, myself, and then sang in a lounge!”

With the lyrics’ mix of plainspoken autobiography and flights of fancy, Friend for Life captures the twists of Arvizu’s life, thoughtfully animated by Cooder’s curatorial spirit.