Unless you spent the summer of '62 hanging out in Washington Square Park, you've probably never heard of Maria and the Washington Square Ramblers, but you've probably heard of their mandolin player, David Grisman, you've probably heard their guitar player, Steve Mandell, who took the 6-string part on the famous "Dueling Banjos" theme from Deliverance, and you've certainly heard of and heard the fiddler, Maria, although it's likely her voice you know best.

A year later, Maria Muldaur (then D'Amato) would make her first recording with the Even Dozen Jug Band, and this year she marks her fortieth anniversary as a recording artist with a new tribute to Peggy Lee, A Woman Alone With The Blues, on Telarc Records. In between, of course, she has recorded with jug bands and swing bands, sang pop, blues, swing and gospel, and for a shining moment in 1974 owned a spot in the top ten with "Midnight At The Oasis," the hit single from her Platinum solo album debut.

While "Midnight" remains her best-known recording, for Maria Muldaur the best was definitely yet to come. Work with Benny Carter, the Jerry Garcia Band, Dr. John and a long list of similarly noteworthy artists has led to a series of albums that have garnered widespread praise. Transbluesency earned the 1986 New York Times Pop & Jazz Poll nod for Album Of The Year, 1992's Louisiana Love Call was the NAIRD Best Adult Alternative Album and its follow up, Meet Me At Midnite, was a W.C. Handy nominee. Her last album, Richland Woman Blues, was nominated for a Grammy as well as a pair of W.C. Handy awards.

Her impressive streak of strong albums continues with A Woman Alone With The Blues... Remembering Peggy Lee. "I wasn't sitting around thinking, 'Gee, if only I could do a tribute to Peggy Lee,'" Muldaur recalls, "but what happened is our producer, Randy Labbe, called me up and said 'I just want to work with you, I've always admired your voice' and he said it could be Maria Muldaur does the songs of Hank Williams or a few others that I admired, but Peggy Lee had just passed away and I was struck by how little notice was made of her passing and it just popped into my head." What popped out was yet another direction for Muldaur, a torch singer approach to jazz and blues that reveals yet another side of her multi-faceted talent.

Revealing new sides is nothing new for Maria Muldaur, of course. She's recorded everything from Memphis Minnie classics to an album of Shirley Temple tunes. That approach hasn't been the wisest commercial move, perhaps, but it's been artistically brilliant. "They don't know where to put me in record stores." she notes. "Maybe if I'd just stuck to one thing, but I don't know. I have no regrets at all, because I've always done what I wanted to do and what I've felt like doing, not in a cavalier way but whatever I was feeling musically at any particular time, that's what I've had the opportunity to do. I guess I'm very eclectic but it makes life more interesting that way, and it makes the music fresh, too."

That eclecticism has taken many directions, but Muldaur remains best known as a blues artist, and A Woman Alone With The Blues, contrary to the title, is one of her straightest jazz efforts in some time. It's hardly her first experience with jazz, though. "To me blues and jazz are very inter-related. Bessie Smith, what she did was blues, but she was backed by a jazz band." Muldaur makes the connection between jazz and her earliest commercial efforts. "Jug band music was the music made in the rural south on homemade instruments to emulate what they heard coming in on the radio from the early dixieland and jazz bands. So, I think they're inter-related and I've always been delving into them side by side. I worked with Benny Carter and an all star jazz big band in the early seventies, did some recording and touring with them, people like Harry "Sweets" Edison and all the greats that were all the A team back in those days, Grady Tate and Milt Hinton. People may not realize it but I have been singing jazz for a really long time. Mostly the older style jazz, jazz from the thirties and forties, that's kinda where I live, I guess, so doing the songs of Peggy Lee fit right into that for me."

A longtime Peggy Lee fan (Muldaur's signature song, "I'm A Woman" was the B-side of Lee's hit "Fever"), compiling a tribute album expanded her appreciation for the legendary performer. "I downloaded everything I could about her and read a bunch of books and bought every album I could find," Muldaur remembers, "and one of the articles said her songwriting was very good and she was rather prolific and she could be considered one of the first singer/songwriters, before that became a popular genre. Back in those days most singers didn't write their songs, there were Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths that wrote the songs they sang. But her stuff was really soulful and it had a really good woman's point of view, a very feminine point of view, very sexy, very sultry. So I said, 'Wow, this is going to be a very interesting and challenging project.' The more I would read about her, the more songs from different eras I would hear, the more I was in awe of her as an artist."

Eventually she had to boil a fifty year career down to a single album of songs, though, and it was no small task. "I could have easily done another dozen songs, and I will eventually, I'll just incorporate them into my sets," she says. "I also wanted people to remember that she started out as a big band singer in the swing era, and she really did swing. So I included a couple songs from the various eras that she came through, and I especially love what I call the film noir period, songs like 'Black Coffee' and 'A Woman Alone With The Blues.' They just evoke such film noir images, you know, of a woman in a black slip sitting alone on a fire escape, and you can hear a saxophone wailing way off in the distance."

In paying tribute, Muldaur also faced the challenge of bringing her own distinctive talents to bear on the music of a performer known for a singular style. According to Muldaur, "The way she sang was just flawless, it was totally in tune and totally expressive by barely doing anything but breathing the lyrics out. She didn't embellish very much. She just sang the song from the very heart of the song, from the very depth of the center of the song, she sang it and just delivered the emotion to the listener...It became very challenging for me to try to stay true to that style and yet true to my own style, not to copy her but to bring that out in singing these songs. It was a good lesson for me as a singer, to apply the less is more principle that obviously guided her work."

Selecting the material was another part of the challenge. She also had to assemble a group of musicians to join her at producer Labbe's studio in Portland, Maine, "...and it's not like I knew a pool of great players in Portland, Maine," she recalled with a laugh. "I knew that I had to get a superb piano player and musical director for this, so I got Dave Torkanowsky from New Orleans, and then he helped me. He managed to snag Harry Connick, Jr.'s rhythm section, drummer (Arthur Latin II) and bassist (Neal Caine). I was a little dismayed when I met them because they looked so young and I thought that this material requires a very seasoned approach, you know, and I was so pleasantly surprised when we sat down and rehearsed. They had all the authority and authenticity that were needed to play this kind of stuff, but they put a fresh, hip spin on it I think."

[Pictured: Jim Rothermel]

With the basic tracks recorded, Muldaur took the masters back to the west coast to produce the remaining elements herself, including horns, guitar, vibes and a guest vocal appearance by Dan Hicks on "Winter Weather." The additional players included Danny Caron (guitar), Jim Rothermel (reeds), Jeff Lewis (trumpet), Kevin Porter (trombone) and Gerry Grosz (vibes). Rothermel assisted with small group arrangements that achieved a big band sound where it was needed. "He's done that with me before. He's a fabulous player, he plays all the reeds, everything from piccolo to flute to clarinet to all the saxes. He has a knack for listening to the big band original recordings and distilling it down, remaining very faithful but simplifying it where necessary," Muldaur says with obvious admiration. "Back in those days you could afford a big band, but it would be prohibitive for a project with this kind of budget. He just stacked the parts and we got it. I think it swings pretty good."

That's what she thinks. I think it swings great. A woman who sings the blues, or jazz, or anything that strikes her fancy, this well, will never be alone for long, and this is an album that should have her keeping company with another group of Handy nominees, and Grammy nominees, and if there's any justice, with the folks at the winner's microphones backstage.

Track List:

Fever * I Don't Know Enough About You * Moments Like This * Winter Weather * Some Cats Know * Everything Is Moving Too Fast * Waitin' For The Train To Come In * The Freedom Train * Black Coffee * A Woman Alone With The Blues * For Every Man There's A Woman * I'm Gonna Go Fishing

(C) 2003 - Shaun Dale