For the week of July 4 - July 10, 2001

Singer Maria Muldaur puts the camels to bed

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By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

Born in Greenwich Village, raised in the shadow of early rhythm and blues, and inspired to follow her heart into music by country singers, Maria Muldaur is an industry legend of the last 40 years of popular music.

On par with her contemporary, Bonnie Raitt, though less well-known, Muldaur is performing for one night on Saturday at the Roosevelt Tavern in Ketchum.

Courtesy photo

Mind you, this is no comeback gig because Muldaur has been recording continuously since the early 1960s, and performs upwards of 200 live shows a year.

The saga began while she was still in her teens, and known as Maria D’Amato. She formed an a girl doo-wop group, The Cashmeres, in the mid-50s, but spent her nights joining in on nightly jams and hootenannies.

Eventually, she discovered the American roots music of Doc Watson, Leadbelly, Bukka White, Skip James and Mississippi John Hurt that would greatly influence her music.

Noted friends from the era included Lovin’ Spoonful founder John Sebastian, Bob Dylan, and John Hammond, Jr. They were all on the same club and café circuit as other innovators like Richie Havens, Jose Feliciano, and blues legends Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, and Son House.

Maria learned fiddle from Doc Watson and his father-in-law, Gaither Carlton, whom she visited in the South. There she attended fiddle conventions, learned clog dancing, and Appalachian songs.

Back in New York, she joined Sebastian, David Grisman and several other musical cronies who had formed the Even Dozen Jug Band. They released their first album in 1963 under the Spivey Records label, which was owned by the blues diva Victoria Spivey.

Of their first four gigs--two of them were in Carnegie Hall, one was in a church and the other, which introduced them to a much wider audience, was on the TV show, "Hootenanny."

Maria and husband, blues vocalist/washboard player, Geoff Muldaur, eventually settled in Woodstock, N.Y., where they became part of a hip musical community that included Dylan, The Band, Janis Joplin's Full TiIt Boogie Band, and Paul Butterfield.

Always one to ask her friends to play on her albums, for her first single album (post the duet years with Geoff Muldaur), Dr. John, Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner, David Lindley, Ray Brown, Amos Garrett, Richard Green, and Clarence White all played with her.

David Nichtern, another songwriter, offered her a little ditty he wrote for that first album, called "Midnight At The Oasis." On the strength of that song, the album went double platinum and Muldaur became the prototypical bluesy-folk singer in a long flowery dress.

But throughout Maria remained a blues fan, especially of women singers, like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, and Sippie Wallace. This is especially obvious in her choices of music on her last two albums, "Meet Me Where They Play the Blues," and the recent release, "Richland Women Blues."

Her current repertoire features songs written in the 1920s and 1930s. In fact, "Richland Woman Blues" contains little- known songs that feel like they’ve been found in your southern grandma’s attic hiding in a dusty trunk.

So shake off your cobwebs because American roots music is coming to town in the form of the inimitable Maria Muldaur.

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