Maria Muldaur. One Hour Mama: The Blues of Victoria Spivey. Nola Blue Records.

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Blabber’n’Smoke last encountered Maria Muldaur when she released the excellent Let’s Get Happy Together, recorded with the New Orleans band Skinny Tuba, an exuberant celebration of New Orleans styled old time music, syncopated and swinging. It was the latest in a lengthy catalogue of albums which have showed that Muldaur, a genuine one hit wonder with her 1972 song Midnight At The Oasis, contains multitudes well away from that radio staple.

Muldaur was in there at the birth of the Greenwich Village folk boom, singing jug band blues with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band before marrying that band’s Geoff Muldaur and releasing two albums with him. Her 70s’ albums featured the cream of L.A. musicians with the first, self titled album, containing that hit single. It also featured the risqué blues of Don’t You Feel My Leg (Don’t You Get Me High), a song by Blue Lu Barker, a pre war blues singer and this is an avenue Muldaur has pursued in her most recent releases including tributes to Memphis Minnie and to that self same Blue Lu Barker. The title of the latter album, Don’t You Feel My Leg: The Naughty Bawdy Blues of Blue Lu Barker, is a pointer to this latest album, a celebration of another vintage blues singer, Victoria Spivey.

Spivey, unlike many of her contemporaries, was a survivor. She first recorded in the 1920s’ and in the 60’s she was managing her own record label with a 1962 album of hers featuring a then unknown Bob Dylan on harmonica (Dylan included a photograph of him and Spivey at the sessions on his New Morning album). Like Dylan, Muldaur was drawn into Spivey’s orbit, nurtured and tutored by the grand dame as her early career took off, she describes Spivey as a mentor and on One Hour Mama she repays her debt in spades with much of the backing provided by the aforementioned Skinny Tuba.

The songs here are risqué and ripe, redolent of the earthy and racy entendres which so scared the authorities of the time, way before rock’n’ roll became the Devil’s music. Muldaur slips so easily into the role, her voice, now much matured, seductive and slippery while her band gloriously revive old times. She kicks off with the wonderfully louche My  Handy Man, a song so fuelled by double entendres that would make Benny Hill blush, a sense that is continued in the woozy New Orleans blues of Organ Grinder (“when you grind it slow I like it the best… you’re the grinder I’ve been waiting for”).  The album features two songs with guest vocals from Elvin Bishop and Taj Mahal, both of whom duet with Muldaur in fine fashion, Bishop, sounding wonderfully weathered on What Makes You Act Like That while Mahal is quite gloriously hammy on the minstrelsy vaudeville of Gotta Have What It Takes.

However, it’s Muldaur who commands attention from start to finish as she revives songs as varied as the rolling piano night club styled Dreaming Of You or the Billie Holiday like lament of Don’t Love No Married Man, a song given a fine sepia toned rendition here. She closes the album with another blinder on T-B Blues, a blues moan which is redolent of past times and, as with all of the songs here, finds her surrounded by a sympathetic arrangement and magisterial playing.

Muldaur has been nominated for a Grammy on six occasions. One Hour Mama really should be the album which gets her that award.

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Maria Muldaur with Tuba Skinny. Let’s Get Happy Together. Stony Plain Records

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Mention Maria Muldaur and, inevitably, Midnight At The Oasis will be the song which comes to mind, it being a sizeable chart hit in 1972. However, as this fine article on the Americana UK website makes clear, Ms. Muldaur had already carved a reputation prior to this and has gone on to release several albums which tend to root around blues and jazz, the old timey sort. And old timey is perhaps the best way to describe Let’s Get Happy Together which Muldaur recorded with a New Orleans troupe, Tuba Skinny, who specialise in blues, jazz and jug band renditions of songs from yesteryear.

Muldaur had been enamoured of Tuba Skinny having heard some of their albums, and when both were scheduled to appear at International Folk Alliance in New Orleans in 2020, they teamed up to perform together. It went so well that it was decided to record an album and Muldaur spent some time researching vintage songs to bring to the studio. It has to be said that the twelve she selected are just about perfect for the project (she offers details of the provenance of each selection in the liner notes – hinting that one should seek out the originals) and the result is a delightful listen for anyone interested in old time jazz, blues, string band and swing.

Tuba Skinny are an eight piece band who resemble a small 1920’s or 30’s ensemble (coronet, tuba, trombone, clarinet, banjo, guitar and washboard) and they deliver the sounds from that era effortlessly with, as Muldaur notes, “a relaxed, natural, organic groove.” It’s worthwhile saying that they also swing. Muldaur meanwhile has always excelled when singing these type of songs and although there is a fine patina settling in these days she remains in grand voice and totally commands these songs.

As for the songs, unless you are an obsessive  devourer of old time music, they are unfamiliar. Muldaur has done her research well and chosen some gems. The opening I LIke You Best Of All (recorded by the Goofus Five) showcases the syncopation and slippery rythyms of the band while the lyrics are in that ribald area of “jelly roll” mentions and such. The title song was written by Louis Armstrong’s first wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong and Be Your Natural Self comes from an artist called Frankie “Half Pint” Jaxon who, according to the notes, sometimes performed as a man and sometimes as a woman, with Muldaur calling him/her, one of the first gender benders.

Irving Berlin is the best-known writer covered here with his I Ain’t Got Rhythm delivered with a nod to Billie Holiday’s 1930’s version but it’s a song by Alexander Hill, Delta Bound, originally recorded by Ivy Anderson and the Duke Ellington Band which takes the honours here. It’s a delightful slow vamp which positively oozes with a southern sensuality.

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Willie Nelson & Leon Russell. One For The Road. Retroworld Records

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1577We’ve had an interesting batch of reissued albums sent in recently so over the next few weeks we’ll be indulging in a little bit of nostalgia. First up is this 1979 collaboration between Willie Nelson and Leon Russell recorded after the pair toured together. Russell, who died in 2016, was riding the coat tails of his fame by then while Nelson was gearing up his “outlaw country” persona breaking out of his Nashville straitjacket but the pair were even then old troupers and this album, originally a double vinyl release, finds them delving into country and tin pan alley standards.  As such it’s not what you might call an “essential” part of either man’s catalogue but it’s a rollicking good listen with Russell and Nelson trading vocals, their voices quite complementary while there’s plenty of Russell’s piano work while Nelson throws in some fine guitar parts.

The album opens with a fiery trio of songs – Detour, I Saw The Light and Heartbreak Hotel which rock as if they were playing in a Texas roadhouse (and apparently Heartbreak Hotel reached No. 1 on the US country charts, a feat Nelson has never again achieved).  Let The Rest Of The World Go By slows the pace on a typical Nelson tearjerker with strings and his sensitive guitar solo while Russell is content to tickle the ivories but it’s back to some barrelling boogie on Trouble In Mind with the pair sharing vocals with Maria Muldaur and Bonnie Raitt (who also adds some wicked slide guitar). They seems to be having great fun on their take of the old chestnut, Don’t Fence Me In which is followed by a superb reading of Wild Side Of Life and they amble to the end of the first of the original discs with a sunny side up attitude on Riding Down The Canyon which is given a fine Western Swing feel and Sioux City Sue.

There’s quite a shift on the second half of the album as they drop the rock’n’roll for Russell’s arrangements of which include Danny Boy, You Are My Sunshine, Stormy Weather and Summertime. As on his own album of classic songs, Stardust, here it’s Nelson’s voice which is the main attraction but there’s no denying Russell’s skills with his arrangement of Summertime particularly grand. The closing One For My Baby and One More For The Road has some funkier keyboards than one normally hears on this old saloon ballad.

Retroworld website