Maria Muldaur - Richland Woman Blues (2001)

While her chart topping days are long gone and she might have slipped in the background, Maria Muldaur grew into genuinely fascinating artist who fearlessly explored dizzying variety of music genres with passion and enthusiasm. True, her later voice might come as a shock to listeners familiar only with her 1974. hit "Midnight at the Oasis" where she was seductive young siren crooning about camels - in the meantime Muldaur matured and gained husky, rough sound that presently introduces her more as sassy roadhouse mama than sweet young thing she once was, but the change is welcome and invigorating - not unlike Marianne Faithfull, Muldaur is far more interesting once she shed her poster girl persona and embraced the music she truly loved.

Richland Woman Blues comes as surprise after previous explorations of swing, gospel and even children's music but let's not forget that Muldaur had already sung pre-WW2 blues on sadly neglected 1983. album Sweet and Slow and here she improves on that idea by inviting few pals to help her with acoustic blues renditions of songs by Memphis Minnie and her contemporaries. It is such delightfully eccentric collection and so completely free of any commercial considerations that usually hinder anything that might not work on the market, that joy of musicians invited here (Bonnie Raitt, Tracy Nelson and Angela Strehli amongst others) is infectious and intoxicating - clearly, they all love this old blues numbers and know them inside out. Bawdy "Me And My Chauffeur Blues" is a hoot and there are two 1920s blues duets completely faithful to Bessie Smith and Clara Smith originals. Wisely, production keeps things very simple and authentic without even trying to tweak with modern gimmicks so its easy to imagine this being played in local barroom with bartenders tapping their feet. I have this album ever since it was released and it is my favourite from everything Muldaur did. Just wonderful, unplugged music that people like Eric Clapton would appreciate. by~1969SL