Maria Muldaur: Sweet
Lovin' Ol' Soul (Stony Plain)
Maria
Muldaur has spent a career interpreting of all manner
of American roots music including blues, jazz, gospel,
folk, country and R&B. She has a particular affinity
for roots and blues music which was crystallized on
2001's "Richland Woman Blues", a beautifully
conceived homage to the early blues singers. "Sweet
Lovin' Ol' Soul" is a marvelous sequel, every bit
as good as the original.
Muldaur
will always be linked to her sultry '70s pop nugget,
"Midnight at the Oasis" from her self titled
1974 debut. In the 1980's Muldaur moved away from her
pop oriented earlier work issuing more roots and blues
oriented albums like 1984's "Sweet & Slow"
(many tunes with Dr. John), "Louisiana Love Call"
and "Meet Me at Midnite" both for the now
defunct Black Top and 1999's "Meet Me Where They
Play the Blues", intended to be a collaboration
with Charles Brown who became ill and died the year
the album was released. "Richland Woman Blues"
found Muldaur at her earthy best digging deep into the
music of Memphis Minnie, Bessie Smith, Rev. Gary Davis
and others with a cast of like minded musicians. On
"Sweet Lovin' Ol' Soul" Muldaur and her cohorts
pick up where they left off this time with more emphasis
on the tough and sassy early female blues pioneers.
Muldaur
perfectly captures the rough and bawdy spirit of no
nonsense woman like Memphis Minnie, Sara Martin, Bessie
Smith, Julia Lee, Lucille Bogan and Susie Edwards (Butterbeans
& Susie). Adding to the vintage feel is a superb
supporting cast including Taj Mahal, Alvin Youngblood
Hart , Steve Freund, Pinetop Perkins, Steve James, Tracy
Nelson, Suzy Thompson, Del Rey and others. Instrumentation
includes jug, mandolin, fiddle and banjo all of which
were once common in the blues but have sadly fallen
out of fashion. Memphis Minnie is a clear inspiration
here with five of her tunes covered. It's not surprising
that the Memphis Minnie is a role model to so many of
today's blues women; she sustained a remarkably lengthy
and prolific career in a male dominated climate, played
the guitar better than most men and had a reputation
as a woman not be be trifled with (one blues singer
described her as a real "hell-cat"). Muldaur's
earthy, sultry vocals are a perfect fit on evocative
Minnie numbers like ""I Am Sailin", "Lookin'
The World Over" and "She Put Me Outdoors"
a duet with Alvin Youngblood Hart that evokes those
classics duets between Memphis Minnie and her husband
Kansas Joe McCoy. Muldaur delivers a fine reading of
"Tricks Ain't Walkin'", a frank tale of prostitution,
originally cut by Lucille Bogan, who waxed some of the
raunchiest records of the 1920's and 30's. Other covers
include great updates of the forgotten Sara Martin on
the title track with jug playing by Fritz Richmond,
a playful duet with Taj Mahal on "Ain't What You
Used To Have" by the bawdy vaudeville team of Butterbeans
& Susie, Bessie Smith's classic "Empty Bed
Blues" and "Decent Woman Blues", featuring
Pinetop Perkins, about the virtues of being a bad
girl, first cut by Julia Lee who became
a star singing, as she said, those "songs my mother
taught me not to sing."
"Sweet
Lovin' Ol' Soul" is a beautifully conceived homage
to those timeless blues woman of yesterday who really
told it like it was and who's songs are as relevant
then as they are today. As Muldaur herself says: "The
blues as an idiom will continue to be vital and relevant
because with grace, wisdom, pathos and a good dose of
humor, the blues poetically testify to the common feelings
and concerns that have always been part of the human
experience... This is a bluesy old world, maybe now
more than ever, and we’re always going to need some
blues to help get us through!"
(Jeff Harris)
