Muldaur now fifinds her oasis in the blues, but loves that hit record
After several years on the folk circuit and in the short-lived jug band revival, Maria Muldaur hit the national spotlight in 1974 with her sultry single “Midnight at the Oasis.” She has since extended a half-century-long career, recording 40-some albums of jazz, folk and especially blues.
We caught up to Muldaur, 73, on the road, of course, heading from a gig at the Sleep Inn in Minot, North Dakota, to the Fur Peace Ranch in Pomeroy, Ohio (“And they ask me why I sing the blues,” she quipped).
As rain pelted her motor home, she spoke of the blues, uplift, growing up in Greenwich Village and that unexpected hit.
You’ve toured consistently all these years, right? You’ve never taken any time off in 50 years?
That’s right. I mean, I take time offff between tours, but I haven’t done anything resembling retirement.
Your last album, “Steady Love,” sounds pretty uplifting.
Isn’t that the real purpose of music — to uplift people’s spirits? There’s a lot of singer- songwriters who write what I call “Dear Diary” music — it’s all about their own personal woes and their feelings. That’s why shrinks and therapists get $200 an hour to listen to that stuffffffffffff. For my money I want to go out to hear live music and hear somebody play something joyous and uplifting.
What music did you hear growing up in Greenwich Village?
When I was a child, my Italian aunt, my mother’s sister, tuned in a station of country music — she called it cowboy music. … The fifirst song I ever learned to sing was a Kitty Wells song, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” at the age of 5. … But then growing up, I would say, in the neighborhood was a lot of jazz. I went past the Village Vanguard where Gerry Mulligan and Bill Evans were playing. I’d go to school, and on my way back, I’d hear them rehearsing there. On my way to junior high school, I went right past Cafe Society where Billie Holiday was playing. I was just too young by a few years to know who she was.
When I was 17, I ran away from home, but since I lived in Greenwich Village, I didn’t see the need to run more than six blocks away. … I would lie about my age and go out and go to bars and hear Thelonious Monk and Ron Carter, Horace Silver, Cannonball Adderley, and there was also a folk music scene emerging at the time. It was a time when a lot of people from the urban North were discovering and started to explore — they called it folk music, but I called it American roots music —
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