Maria Muldaur & Her Garden of Joy - Good Time Music for Hard Times (2009)

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Maria Muldaur & Her Garden of Joy - Good Time Music for Hard Times (2009)

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Maria Muldaur's ripe, sexy vocals have been delighting audiences ever since she started singing in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. As you may or may not know, her first recordings were made for Elektra Records in 1964 as part of the Even Dozen Jug Band, a group that included future icons John Sebastian (Lovin' Spoonful) and progressive bluegrass pioneer David Grisman, creator of Dawg Music. Muldaur revisits the music of her youth here with the help of Sebastian, Grisman, Dan Hicks, and a youthful jug band she recently discovered, the Crow Quill Night Owls, featuring Kit Stovepipe on National guitar, jug, and washboard. "Garden of Joy," a classic Muldaur cut with Jim Kweskin, was the title tune of one of his early solo albums. It features a terrific fiddle solo by Suzy Thompson, and Muldaur's vocals still hit all the high notes, although her low end is now richer and more soulful than in her youth. "I Ain't Gonna Marry," another ragtime slow blues from Kweskin's "Garden of Joy," features Muldaur's exuberant singing and high-spirited work from the ensemble. Hicks contributes two new compositions, still heavily swinging and ironic: "The Diplomat" is a jaundiced look at modern life full of his skewed humor and set to a ragtime rhythm with Grisman's mandolin shooting off sparks and "Let It Simmer" is a sultry, laid back prescription for dealing with life's difficulties. The traditional jug band numbers, all arranged by Muldaur, are full of high spirits and ragtime vigor, especially the raucous "Shout You Cats" and the lascivious "He Calls That Religion." She nods to 2009 with two more timely traditional tunes "Bank Failure Blues," a dark, depressing dirge that sounds like it could have been written yesterday and "The Panic Is On," which takes a slightly lighter look at hard times. Needless to say, after a lifetime of music making, this project sounds more focused than the recordings of the Even Dozen Jug Band, but Muldaur and her pals still bring plenty of funky energy to the table.

Allmusic.com

The last time that I featured the femme fatale blues torch singer reincarnate Maria Muldaur (at least that is the way that she, successfully, projected herself in her recent blues revival projects) was in a review of her 2007 CD tribute to the great singers of the 1920s and 1930s, Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, Sippy Wallace and the like. I might add that I raved on and on about the value of her project, the worthiness of the singers honored and her own place in the blues pantheon. Of course, for those in the know about the roots of the folk revival of the 1960s at least, the name Maria Muldaur is forever associated with another closely-related branch of roots music-the jug band. Maria was the very fetching female vocalist for the old time revivalist Jim Kweskin Jug Band (and an earlier effort in her home town, New York City, by John Sebastian of The Lovin' Spoonful fame, The Even Dozen Jug Band).

Well, hold the presses please, because the red hot blues mama has come back home in her latest project, the CD under review, "Maria Muldaur And Her Garden Of Joy". And if Maria was kind of thrown in the background somewhat in those days by the strong presence of Jim Kweskin and that of her ex-husband Geoff Muldaur she is front and center on this effort. One of the virtues of jug music back in the day was that it was basically zany, funny, send-off kind of music and full of, usually, high-spirited if coded sexual innuendos. This, on occasion, was a welcome break from the heavy political message songs that were de rigueur or the traditional ballads filled with tales of thwarted love, duplicity and murder and mayhem. In this CD Maria brings back the energy and just plain wistfulness of that type of music. And she does it on her terms.

As fate would have it, or rather by a conscious act, I happened to see Maria and her very fine new jug band made up of younger, well, Jim Kweskin jug band-types (along with guest performer, now blues/ragtime guitar virtuoso John Sebastian) in Cambridge (one of her old stomping rounds and an important secondary center of the folk revival in the 1960s). And, like the last time I saw her a couple of years ago when she was that femme fatale blues singer, she did not disappoint. The woman carried the show with the energy of the old days (that you can get an idea of by going on "YouTube" in a click from 1966).

The line between jug music and flat out torch blues sometimes is not that wide and the switch over thus is not that dramatic. At least in Maria's hands. Witness her version of Mississippi John Hurt's "Richland Woman" which she did jug-style at the concert (she did a more lowdown bluesy version on her "Richland Woman" album). The example on this album that comes to mind is the little known but, currently, very relevant 1929 song "Bank Failure Blues". Also the classic jug tune "Garden Of Joy" and another one "Sweet Lovin' Ol' Soul" (also done blues-style on a previous album of the same name). This is good stuff but begs the question. Jim Kweskin is still performing. Geoff Muldaur is still performing. Geoff and Jim occasionally perform together. Wouldn't it be a treat if…?

Review by Alfred Johnson

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Maria Muldaur & Her Garden of Joy - Good Time Music for Hard Times (2009)

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Maria Muldaur & Her Garden of Joy - Good Time Music for Hard Times (2009)

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Maria Muldaur & Her Garden of Joy - Good Time Music for Hard Times (2009)

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