Celebrating Mississippi John Hurt

A Baker’s Dozen of Great Mississippi John Hurt Songs

Photo: Joe Alper

Mississippi John Hurt has been one of the most influential of the Delta bluesmen, influencing generation after generation of blues guitar pickers and his songs covered by a who’s who of artists since he re-emerged in the 1960s after years of quiet obscurity as a farmer in Mississippi.

By all accounts he was a delightful man, soft spoken and polite, exuding a quiet wisdom and loved by everyone who met him. His faith was important to him, which became apparent to those who knew him during the years of his rediscovery. Holly Ochs, who hosted John during his early days in New York, said, “The depth and quality of that faith was so powerful that it would touch thousands of people in the few remaining years of his life.”

His biographer, Philip R. Ratcliffe notes that Hurt “was always aware of the presence of his God and would always say his prayers at night.”

Born the son of former slaves in 1892, John Hurt started playing guitar when he was nine and by his late teens had developed his own particular style. After hearing John play in 1928, The OKeh Records’ recording director invited him to Memphis where he recorded half a dozen songs and then to New York for another recording session. Songs recorded at these first sessions included many of Hurt’s best loved songs, like Louis Collins, Avalon Blues, Stack O’Lee Blues, Got the Blues Can’t Be Satisfied and Blessed Be the Name.

The Great Depression and the subsequent collapse of record sales, however, ensured that John Hurt’s musical career never took off and he returned to life as a farmer in Avalon, playing occasionally at country dances and parties.

When he was 70, still tending another man’s cows and keeping a few hogs and chickens, and he and his wife Jesse dirt poor, Dick Spottiswood happened upon some of Hurt’s 1928 Okeh recordings and went searching for him. John, though he had no guitar and hadn’t played for at least two years, agreed to go to Washington D.C. with Spottiswood and his friends. Seemingly he assumed he was in some sort of trouble with the government and thought he’d better go!

John Hurt ended up recording again and performed to appreciative audiences in festivals, coffee houses and concert halls until his death in 1966.

John Hurt’s guitar picking style has become a template and springboard for, probably, all acoustic blues guitarists. That solid, rhythmic, alternating base with a syncopated melody on the upper strings is the basis of the guitar work of Chris Smither, Rory Block, Eric Bibb and a host of others. Stefan Grossman played a big part in introducing aspiring musicians to John Hurt’s guitar style through his Guitar Workshop and instructional videos.

Happy Traum, who also met Hurt in the 1960s, has also done his part with his instructional videos. Whatever limited skill I have in playing finger-style blues guitar was set in motion by painstakingly working my way through The Fingerpicking Blues of Mississippi John Hurt, Happy Traum & John Sebastian, on Homespun.

So, in celebration of the great Mississippi John Hurt, here are 13 of his most famous songs covered by other artists. Of course, you ought to go and check out John Hurt himself, and before we get to the covers, here he is with Make Me Down a Pallet on Your Floor.

For a completely different take on it, check out Gillian Welch’s version from her 2003 Soul Journey. But here’s Happy Traum’s version.

Maria Muldaur, Richland Woman Blues

First recorded by John Hurt in 1963, Maria Muldaur’s version appears on her 2001 Richland Woman Blues album, where she is accompanied by John Sebastian, who had named his 1960’s band The Lovin’ Spoonful after a lyric in Hurt’s Coffee Blues. [check out our interview with Maria Muldaur here]

Eric Bibb, Stagalee

Stack O’Lee, Stackalee or as Bibb has it, Stagalee, references a murder in a barroom in St Louis. John Hurt, who first recorded the song in December 1928 in New York, insisted the two men involved were white men and the fight took place in a mine where Stackolee was trying to rob the miners who were gambling. Bibb’s version appears on his 2011 Blues, Ballads and Work Songs, after a live version in 2009 on Live à FIP, 2009). [Our recent interview with Eric Bibb is here]

Chris Smither, Candy Man

Chris Smither has played Mississippi John Hurt songs throughout his long career and his Candy Man appears on his excellent Train Home album from 2003. Candy Man Blues was first recorded in 1928 by Hurt and was a staple of his performances in the 1960s. It’s a bawdy song, rather at odds with the spirituals Hurt would often play, although apparently he was always reluctant to play ribald songs to people he didn’t know, especially ladies. [You can find our interview with Chris here]

Rory Block, Frankie and Albert

This very old song was first recorded by The Leighton Brothers in 1916, and is about an event said to have taken place in a St. Louis barroom where Frankie shot a ragtime pianist for his infidelity with his lover. The song was recorded by John Hurt in his very first recording session in Memphis in 1928 and then in 1966 for his second studio album of the 60s, Today! Rory Block was influenced by John Hurt as a young guitarist in the early 1960s in New York. She recorded a terrific tribute album to Hurt, Avalon Blues in 2013, with ten favourite John Hurt songs. [check out our interview with Rory Block here.]

Mary Flower, Monday Morning Blues

Mary Flower is an amazing acoustic guitarist who specializes in Piedmont-style finger picking with dashes of Delta, ragtime and jazz and jazz. Her Monday Morning Blues is on her 2007 Ragtime Gal album. John Hurt first recorded it in Memphis in February 1928. [You’ll find our interview with Mary here]

Brooks Williams, Louis Collins

John Hurt said that “He [Collins] was a great man, I know that, and he was killed by two men named Bob and Louis. I got enough of the story to write the song.” Hurt’s is the only version of the song and is almost certainly about a real event. He first recorded it in 1928 in New York. (Check out Patrick Blackman’s take on the song here). Brooks Williams is a sensational acoustic guitarist and singer and his version of Louis Collins on his 2010 Baby O! album is masterful.

Also of note is English-bluesman-in-France Paul Cowley’s wonderful interpretation of the song on his 2021 Long Time Comin’ [You’ll find our terrific interview with Paul here]

Taj Mahal, My Creole Belle

Taj Mahal sounds remarkably like John Hurt on his recording of the song on his 2016 Labor of Love. John Hurt recorded the song in 1963 on Folk Songs and Blues, his first recording on the Piedmont label after being rediscovered. Creole Belles was a song by Lampe and Sidney, first recorded in 1901.

Lonesome String Band, Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me

Originally written by William Myer, and set by John Hurt to the tune of Jimmie Rodgers’s Waiting for a Train, this is one of the lesser known Mississippi John Hurt songs, which he recorded in 1966. The Lonesome String Band on their When the Sun Comes Up album in 2018, give it a quite different feel, with the banjo and fiddle to the fore.

Catfish Keith, Satisfied and Tickled Too

Catfish Keith is a quite remarkable exponent of acoustic blues and his Satisfied and Tickled Too, which also features his wife, Penny, on his 2007 If I Could Holler album, features everything you expect from Catfish’s outstanding guitar work – slides, bends, rock solid rhythm and complex picking. [Here’s our interview with Catfish]

Hans Theessink with Big Daddy Wilson, Pay Day

Danish blues guitarist Hans Theessink has been one of Europe’s top blues artists for decades and his version of Pay Day, with his warm baritone voice melding with Wilson’s sweet tenor on their 2021 Pay Day album, is delightful.

Bruce Cockburn, Avalon Blues

Avalon in Mississippi was, of course, John Hurt’s home town, and the song records Hurt’s preference for the rural scene he was used to over the big city: “New York’s a good town but it’s not for mine, Goin’ back to Avalon, near where I have a pretty mama all the time”.  Bruce Cockburn, a hugely skilled finger-style guitarist, performs his version of the song on Avalon Blues: A Tribute to Mississippi John Hurt from 2001. This is a wonderful album of John Hurt songs by a top-class field of roots musicians. Avalon Blues is the second song.

Gillian Welch, Beulah Land

Hurt’s faith was important to him and he recorded a number of gospel songs, including Beulah Land, an old spiritual, in 1966 on his Today! album. Gillian Welch’s version on the 2001 Avalon Blues tribute album is very different from Hurt’s – more O Brother Where Art Thou, but a very fine version, nonetheless.

And it’s worth including this short video of John Oates telling the story of John Hurt’s guitar, which also features a version of Spike Driver’s Blues.

Finally, don’t miss this Mississippi John Hurt Documentary (20 mins)

Blues Artist Interviews: Five things We Learned

“Where there is light there is hope; and where there is hope, there’s a chance”
Jimmy Carter, Blind Boys of Alabama

During 2021, we had the opportunity to speak to 15 great blues and roots artists, as well Mark Carpentieri of M.C. Records and Tim Duffy of the Music Maker Foundation. All of them, plying their trade, entertaining us, at times challenging us, against the significant odds posed by the pandemic. Each of them doing what they do with determination, grace and even joy. Pick any one of the interviews if you feel in need of a little inspiration – go ahead, you’ll come away feeling just a bit better about life.

So, looking back, what did we learn from talking to each of these exceptional people?

1. Age is no barrier to following your dream.
Several of the people I talked to are in their eighth or ninth decade of life. A time when many people just want to sit back on the sofa and start watching daytime TV, thinking their best days are behind them. Not so with people like Jack Ward or Elizabeth King, who at 83 and 77 respectively had just released their first solo albums and were looking forward to going on the road to promote them. Or Maria Muldaur, in her late seventies, who teamed up with a bunch of young people to record Let’s Get Happy Together, the most upbeat, cheerful album I heard all year. She told me simply, “you have a choice every day – you can be bummed out of you can be happy.” Atagirl, Maria! And I love the positivity in Bryn Haworth’s Boom Baby Boom, which he wrote about getting older: “you’ve got one life and so much left to give…there’s still time for one more dance.”

Jorma Kaukonen

Jorma Kaukonen, now turned 80, told me he was just about to embark on a new tour with Hot Tuna. He has just released a new album and has been performing regularly online from his Fur Peace Ranch during the pandemic. He told me performing was “just as energizing as it ever was.”

And then there’s Jimmy Carter of the Blind Boys of Alabama, who’s 88 and has just released Blind Faith, a terrific album of Americana/gospel songs – his first solo album – and who told me that he hopes the album “will energize people and change lives.” Now that was impressive – Jimmy’s still wanting to be a blessing to others.

2. Music can be a great vehicle for not only entertaining us, but challenging us.
Guy Davis, Eric Bibb, and Leyla McCalla didn’t make protest albums, but they included songs that highlighted injustice and made us think about our response to that. Davis’s God’s Gonna Make Things Over about the Tulsa Massacre and Eric Bibb’s Emmett’s Ghost dealing with the murder of Emmett Till both used historical tragedies to shine a light on the present. And Leyla McCalla’s stark Song for a Dark Girl, about a lynching “way down in Dixie” is as arresting as Strange Fruit. She told me that music isn’t some sterile environment where an artist can simply be apolitical. Musicians want to entertain us; we want to be entertained – but music, the blues in particular, has always been an important way for artists to comment on what is going on around them, and to help us all to see the injustice that many of us, in our comfortable lives, might miss or ignore.

3.Faith is a vital life-force for quite a number of these artists.
Jimmy Carter told me “my faith is strong” and “when it gets rough, I pray.” He and Elizabeth King and Elder Jack Ward have had considerable challenges in their lives, but each told me how important their faith in God was for them. Jack Ward came from a life of poverty as a sharecropper and told me “when you weak, God will make you strong; when you lonely, he would never leave you alone.”

Elizabeth King

Ms. King, who also grew up picking and chopping cotton, told me the incredible story of how God had healed her after a horrific injury from a drunk driver; now she says, her job “is just to encourage people…when you’re going through something, just turn to God.” Maria Muldaur told me she’s being going to her neighbourhood African American church for the last 40 years and is inspired by joyful worship.

Bryn Haworth, slide guitarist par excellence, who’s featured on the albums of a who’s who of top rock artists, as well as having an excellent back catalogue of his own, spends a lot of his time visiting prisons and talked about the “amazing stuff” he’d seen happen through prayer. His vibrant faith shone through our conversation – a faith, which, incidentally, has him on a mission to save the trees in England, about which he has a song on his new album.

4. Blues music is alive and kicking.
It may have been around for more than a hundred years now, but artists old and young are breathing new life into the genre all the time. Mark Carpentieri of M.C. Records spoke of his optimism as he looked around at the blues and roots scene and saw people “taking the blues and gospel and making it their own.”

Grainne Duffy, a young Irish guitarist and singer, who’s performed on stages with Keb’ Mo’ and Van Morrison, has recorded an outstanding album, Voodoo Blues, with a set of original songs that both tap deeply into the legacy of the blues and breathe positivity. Joanna Connor, whose terrific 4801 South Indiana Avenue was produced by Joe Bonamassa and is packed with raw, high energy musicianship, is one of today’s great electric guitarists. She told me she was “fleshing out” stories as she played the songs, and making them sound epic in the process. She talked about the joy in the blues, despite the hardship out of which they emerged and the way they speak to the human emotion, And Carolyn Wonderland, the blistering Texas guitar-slinger, just finishing a stint in John Mayall’s band, whose vocals and guitar work on Tempting Fate are positively spine-tingling, talked about the fun and joy in making her music.

5. And the blues is a worldwide phenomenon.
Yes, the blues are founded on the experience of African Americans, and are deeply rooted in the souls of people like Guy Davis and Eric Bibb. And Tim Duffy, through his Music Maker Foundation, is working hard to preserve the tradition of unsung Southern musicians and present them to the world – he talked about the “very special people” in the communities he works with and the need to “amplify their voices” and promote “cultural equity.”

Ireland’s Grainne Duffy

But I talked to Paul Cowley, an Englishman living in rural France, playing traditional acoustic blues – which he discovered relatively late in life and was smitten with; and to Mark Harrison, another Englishman, whose story-telling blues reflect deeply on the human condition; to Leyla McCalla, whose family roots are in Haiti; to Grainne Duffy from Ireland; to Bert Deivert, an American who’s lived most of his life in Sweden, and who says “it’s the soul of it, the emotion, which drives me.” Eric Bibb, of course, has also made his home in Sweden for many years.

All these people are doing more than just keeping the blues alive – they are, of course, deeply drawing from the well of music and blues feeling from the past, but as well, lyrically, they are applying the blues to new and current situations, and musically, they are either forging new directions or keeping it fresh by their talent, dedication and musicianship.

There are links to all the interviews below for you to read and enjoy:

Jorma Kaukonen: “The good life is more than material stuff…”
Bryn Haworth: Still time for one more dance
Jimmy Carter: And his Blind Faith is a ray of hope
Carolyn Wonderland: Is Tempting Fate
Bert Deivert: His story-telling blues
Eric Bibb: “Everything can change if we believe”
Elder Jack Ward: From sharecropping to soulful singing
Elizabeth King: Living in the Last Days is a gift for us all
Mark Harrison: His Unique Talent
Maria Muldaur: Wants us to get happy with her
Guy Davis: Hits a rich vein of creativity
Paul Cowley: Long Time Comin’ – but more than worth it
Tim Duffy: “A glorious awakening of musical tradition”
Joanna Connor: “The blues is honest music”
Mark Carpentieri: Optimistic about the future of the blues
Leyla McCalla: Making Music that Matters
Grainne Duffy: Drenched with the blues and Southern soul.

Maria Muldaur wants us to get happy with her

“You have a choice every day, you can be bummed out or you can be happy.”

Having a tough week? Feeling a bit down? Here’s a sure fire-remedy – click on the video below and catch Maria Muldaur singing with New Orleans band, Tuba Skinny, and feel your cares slip away as your smile gives way to a big grin and you suddenly find yourself on your feet dancing.

If you’re a roots music fan you’ll know Maria Muldaur from her many albums of blues, jazz and roots music over the last five decades; if not, you’ll surely know Maria’s big hit song from 1973, Midnight at the Oasis, with its sand dunes, camels and cactus. She’s still going strong, as upbeat and positive about life as ever, and has blessed us with a new album, recorded with Tuba Skinny, a group of traditional jazz musicians, entitled Let’s Get Happy Together.

Recorded in New Orleans last October during the dark days of the pandemic, but released as some semblance of normally seems to be returning (at least to America and Europe), Let’s Get Happy Together captures the note of hope we’re all looking for, not only in its title but in the exuberance and joy of the songs.

Maria Muldaur has had a stellar career, with a back catalogue of 43 albums, six Grammy nominations, multiple Blues Music Award nominations and a Lifetime Achievement Americana Trailblazer Award from the Americana Music Association in 2019. And that’s before we get to the hordes of fans all over the world.

The new album is one of the best you’ll hear this year and features twelve songs from the 1920s and 30s that Holger Petersen, the album’s executive producer and founder of Stony Plain Records, its label, says “is a historic project that pays reverence to many of the early New Orleans women of blues and jazz.”

Muldaur says that she hopes listeners “will be inspired to look up these wonderful artists yourself on YouTube and start exploring and enjoying the endless abundance of incredible music they left us.”

I got chatting by phone to Maria at her home in California about the album and about life in general. She was a breath of fresh air. I asked her, first of all, how the album came about, and she told me this remarkable story.

“Well,” she said, “a few years ago, I was shopping in a store in Woodstock, New York, and this wonderful, exuberant, toe-tapping music came over the speakers and it just sounded like the most wonderful vintage jazz. So, I remarked to the shop gal how cool it was that the local radio station would be playing this hip jazz. And she said, ‘Oh, that’s not the radio. That’s a band. That’s Tuba Skinny.’ Well, you know, I’ve studied that kind of music all my life, really immersed myself in it, since I was in a jug band back in the sixties, and I’d never heard of them. She said, well, they are a young band from New Orleans and they play on the streets. And I couldn’t believe that they were young because they were playing with such soulfulness and such authenticity. So I just was immediately smitten with their music.

“Long story short, she knows some of them. So she hooked me up with five of their albums and I became an ardent fan. It was like they were channeling not just the music itself, but the very atmosphere and aura and rhythms of life from that bygone era. It’s almost like going back in a time machine to a time when things were not as mechanized and digitalized and, you know, industrialized.

“It just makes you happy to listen to it! Well, anyway, I was making my last album two years ago in New Orleans where I was paying tribute to a wonderful New Orleans blues woman named Blue Lu Barker, who originally wrote and recorded a tune that’s been in my repertoire for almost 50 years, called Don’t You Feel My Leg. So I made it my business to go see Tuba Skinny every chance I got, whether they were playing on the street or in clubs. And eventually the washboard player recognized me. I didn’t go up and talk to them or anything – I just was there as a fan. And he said, is your name Maria? Maria Muldaur? I said, Yeah. And he couldn’t believe it!

“So I ended up sitting in with them a couple of times. And then in January of 2020, I was invited to come to New Orleans and do a special guest showcase of the International Folk Alliance, and I wondered if Tuba Skinny would play with me. So I got in touch with them. We had one quick rehearsal, and it immediately felt like going home because it just was a natural fit. Even though they were several generations younger than me, it’s clear we’ve all been drinking out of the same musical fountain.

“So anyway, we did the gig, it was wildly received and an old friend of mine, Holger Petersen happened to be there because he was getting a lifetime achievement award for having had a roots music show on the radio for 50 years in Canada. And over lunch the next day he asked me about doing an album with them. And I loved the idea. So that’s how this album came about.”

The album has songs originally done or written by Lil Hardin Armstrong, Louis Armstrong’s second wife, Dorothy Lamour, Frankie “Half Pint” Jaxon, Sweet Pea Spivey (sister of Victoria Spivey) and the delightfully named Goofus Five. The music is infectious and upbeat and the lyrics are clever, at times funny and uplifting. It’s music, I suggested to Maria, that stands the test of time.

“I would say that these songs were written in a time when things were more kind of heartfelt and genuine. And I go out of my way to choose songs that have relevance for me. Now, I figure if they resonate with me a hundred and some odd years later, then there’s a good chance they’ll resonate with my listeners. The very first day when Holger took me out to lunch. I got really excited about the project, and we said, well, what kind of songs will we have? And he started scrolling around. And we had the idea that a theme of the album could be paying tribute to women artists from New Orleans.

“And he came across Lil Hardin’s Let’s get Happy Together. Which we both found immediately appealing. I said that it should be the first song on the album – in fact it should be the title of the album. But little did we think that barely a month or two later, we’d all be locked down and put into hibernation? And so for the album to come out in May like it did it, just as people are starting to be vaccinated and come out of hibernation, it couldn’t be a more timely title.

“But that song was written over a hundred years ago, and it’s got very hip lyrics and is very lighthearted. I think people didn’t take themselves too seriously back in those days, because there’s all kinds of lighthearted, goofy songs. People weren’t expressing their inner anger. All my life I’ve gone for songs that have some kind of uplifting message.”

As you listen to this album, there’s a lot of positivity throughout. From talking to Maria you can’t help but suspect that these songs are reflective of her as a person.

“I’m disgustingly positive, some might say! The kids in the band say to me, ‘You’re always so upbeat, so cheerful!’ Why live here on this planet, if you’re not gonna at least attempt to be that? You have a choice every day, you can be bummed out or you can be happy. My motto is ‘No problems. Just solutions.’ That’s who I am as a person. And I always choose songs that reflect who I am as a person.

“After Midnight At The Oasis, they realized they had a possible hitmaker on their hands, and Warner Brothers were trying to duplicate that success, trying to figure out how to get that to happen again. So they brought me a song called You’re no Good [which the Swinging Blues Jeans had had a hit with in 1963]. And I listened to it and said, ‘Why in the world would I put that message out over the airways? Husbands are telling their wives they are no good; parents are telling their kids, they’re no good. Why would I amplify that message?’

“Well, my dear friend Linda Ronstadt had a huge hit with that about a year or so later, and took that all the way to the bank! But I never regretted it because I’m all about putting out a positive message.”

One of my favourite songs on Let’s Get Happy Together is Valaida Snow’s 1935 Swing You Sinners. Snow was a virtuoso jazz musician known as “Queen of the trumpet,” and hailed by Louis Armstrong as the “world’s second-best trumpet player.” The song celebrates faith as being something joyful and upbeat.

“If you’re going to have faith in God,” said Maria, “it might as well make you happy, right? Rather than, you know, cowering and graveling before some angry father God, just looking to punish you at every turn. That’s one kind of religion, but my religion is let’s get happy together!”

She told me she’s attended an African American church in her neighborhood for the last forty years where she enjoys the kind of worship that is always joyful and full of music. “And that song, I think, puts that across. It’s just swinging so hard for one thing, and without saying anything too religious, it basically says, when those old blues come around, you don’t have to wear a frown, just swing out, boys, and let the sweet tones ring!”

Even the blues, for which Maria Muldaur is well-known, shouldn’t be something downbeat and depressing. “The blues is always about surviving by the time you get to the end of it. ‘Trouble in mind, I’m blue but I won’t be blue always, the sun’s gonna shine in my back yard some day.’ That could sum up the theme of so many blues songs. It’s not about wallowing in self-pity. It’s about expressing your sorrow or your disappointment, but finding a way to transcend it. And that, to me, is the magic of the blues and why the blues will never go out of fashion.”

Photo: Alan Mercer

Talking to Maria Muldaur is a ray of sunshine. Like Rory Block, whom I spoke to a while back, who told me that at 70, she was “just getting going,” and whom Maria referred to as “her little sister,” Maria told me that, “I certainly don’t feel like I’m slowing down very much.” She’ll keep on making great music “as long as I can find some kind of music that interests me.”

I wondered as she looks back over her career, all the albums, all the awards, all the accolades, what stands out for her, what is she most proud off?

“Well of course I just always followed my passion or philosophy – Joseph Campbell used to call it following your bliss. That’s what I’ve done without ever thinking about the commercial success that might or might not be involved in a particular endeavor. It’s been all about the music. When I look back, I’ve been so blessed to work, to record, and to perform with so many of my own musical heroes. Everyone from Doc Watson to Ry Cooder to Dr. John, to Mavis Staples, to Bonnie Raitt. Working with Benny Carter in an all-star big band was certainly the thrill of a young singer’s life, as was singing a duet with Hoagy Carmichael. And singing a duet with Ralph Stanley was an out of body experience.”

And then Maria told me this great story about her 2008 album Yes We Can! for which she had formed a “peace choir” of women’s voices.

“I had originally thought of it as a protest album about the issues that were going on in the day. Then I remembered that I actually didn’t like protest music! I liked the causes they were espousing, but I didn’t like the music itself. So I quickly changed the idea to turn it into a pro-peace album. And the first song I thought of was Yes, We Can, which was an Allen Toussaint song that had been a Pointer Sisters hit around the same time as Midnight at the Oasis.

“So I formed a choir of women who have raised their voices for peace and social justice. It included Bonnie Raitt, Joan Baez, Odetta, Jane Fonda, Phoebe Snow, Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir – and that names just a few. And so I put together this really cool album, and someone who worked in the studio where we were mixing said, you know, there’s a guy running for president and he’s using, ‘Yes we can,’ as his slogan, you should send him that song. I said, ‘yeah right, some guy running for president is gonna listen to my song!’ And then two weeks later, someone else was in the studio and said the same thing. But I wasn’t interested – because I was planning to vote for Hillary – this was early in that election year.

“But I ended up sending the album through someone I knew who could get it to him and expected nothing at all. A week later I got a handwritten letter from Obama himself thanking me for the song and saying it perfectly fit the spirit of his campaign. And he was going to have it played at his rallies and speeches. I thought, you know, I have mail on my desk I haven’t answered in four years and this guy took time out personally thank me! I ended up voting for him of course. So that’s something I’m really, really proud of.”

Now you can’t talk to Maria Muldaur without asking about that song – Midnight at the Oasis. Does she still enjoy performing it?

“I do. That song put me on top, not just in the States, but all over the world, for some strange reason. It’s a song about a camel! But, first of all, it’s a very hip song musically. A lot of jazz artists have covered it over the years because it has really hip jazz chord changes. And it’s a song that’s enjoyable to play. It almost kind of plays itself and I can improvise on it every night. God forbid if my biggest hit had been some three-chord song! So I’m just grateful every day for it; it’s a delightful song to sing.

“And as if that weren’t enough, when we get to that song, which we do almost at the very end of set, we see people in the audience, couples grabbing hands and giving each other knowing looks. Because for some reason, that song, so I’m told, was the soundtrack to many a love and lust, and it brings back hot sexy memories! So I’m happy to have provided something like that; it’s a song I’ll forever be grateful for.”

Having said that, we’re all grateful that Maria Muldaur hasn’t rested on her laurels – not at any stage over the past fifty years. And here she is, still making great music that entertains and uplifts. Quite rightly she’s very proud of Let’s Get Happy Together, which may be her best work yet. Her good friend Bonnie Raitt certainly thinks so.

That being the case, she says, “I must be still slowly but surely improving my skills as a singer. So, I’ll just keep doing it until nobody wants to hear it anymore!”

As long as Maria Muldaur keeps on making music, we want to hear it.

Maria Muldaur’s Steady Love: a bluesy, swampy soul fest

Maria Muldaur is probably best known for her 1974 hit Midnight at the Oasis, but she has had a long and outstanding career over 40 years. During that time, she’s released around 40 albums covering almost every kind of American roots music. But primarily Maria is a blues woman, and is most at home in a funky, swampy, New Orleans kind of blues. Her albums have been nominated for both Blues Music Awards and Grammy awards in the Traditional Blues category. She a terrific singer and her voice just seems to have got better over the years, her sultry, husky tones suiting the songs she sings to a tee.

At nearly 70 years young, she’s still a formidable performer – I saw her a couple of weeks ago in Belfast, with her top notch, high energy band, bring her packed audience to its feet, shouting and cheering and hollering for more. There are just no signs of her slowing down. Both she and her hand clearly enjoyed every minute on stage and the audience loved it.

Her new album, Steady Love, is a no-holds barred, New Orleans, bluesy, swampy soul fest. Part gospel, part blues, it’s what Maria calls “Bluesiana.” As one reviewer said, “Muldaur has one foot in church and another in a Saturday night juke joint as she belts out hand-clapping church rousers, soul ballads and greasy swamp stompers.”

On the gospel numbers in the album, the blues are never far away. She does the Soul Stirrers gospel number I Done Made It Up In My Mind (To Serve God Till I Die), Eric Bibb’s inspirational Don’t you ever let nobody drag your spirit down, Stephen Bruton’s 2005 Walk by faith, done with a very distinctive, piano-driven, N’awlins feel. I also take the last song in the album, Rick Vito’s I am not alone, to be a spiritual song.

The other gospel number is a Rev. William Herbert Brewster song, As an eagle stirreth in her nest. Brewster was an influential African American Baptist minister, gospel singer and community leader, born in 1897. He published more than 200 gospel songs during his long life and, during the dreadful days of Jim Crow in the American South, “Dr. Brewster constantly preached on the theme that a better day was coming, one in which all men could walk as brothers”, according to Elvis Presley biographer Peter Guralnick.

The song is a reflection on Deuteronomy 32.11:

Like an eagle protecting its nest, hovering over its young, God spread out his wings, took hold of Israel, carried him on his back.

Rev W H Brewster

The song proceeds largely by mentioning a number of major Old Testament stories – Noah, Moses, the walls of Jericho, the prophet Ezekiel, Israel in exile in Babylon – and cites each of these as examples of God at work in his world, “stirring things up.”  By so doing, Brewster draws our attention to the way the Bible depicts God as neither part of creation or removed from creation. The God of the Bible is a God who is involved in history, engaged with his people and engaged in the wider world. The song goes on the mention how God was at work in “world war 1” and “world war 2.” Despite the horror and destruction in these events, God had not abandoned his world.

Proof of this comes towards the end of the song, where Maria sings about “Friday evening”, the time when God “stirred up the dead” – repeated four times – “that was in the grave” – clearly a reference to the resurrection of Christ. The ultimate engagement of God in the world was in the man, Jesus, who participated in our humanity and suffered the very worst of human oppression, torture and evil. And the pivotal moment in God’s engagement in the world comes on the Sunday after the Friday, when God “stirred up the dead.” The result? “Soon he will, gonna come on down and stir up the world just one more time.”

The biblical narrative, Old Testament and New, is all of a piece – it’s the story of a world gone wrong, but not abandoned by God, who continually was at work in his people’s history, continually moving towards a new world of justice and peace. That new day began on the Sunday that “God stirred up the dead” and as the song says, God wants to “stir up his people to watch and work and pray.”  William Brewster’s faith in a God who is involved in history, a God with justice on the agenda, led him to hope for a better day when black and white could live harmoniously and injustice would be ended. That’s the challenge of this song, I guess – God works in the world through us, so are we gonna let God “stir us up” to “watch and work and pray?” How much are we prepared to get involved in God’s earth-stirring, justice-oriented agenda?

Thanks, Maria, for showing “that spirituality can still rock out –the sacred and the profane aren’t all that far apart, and spirituality can still temper earthly desire without corrupting the former or diluting the latter”. (John Taylor, Blinded by Sound)

But as an eagle stirreth her nest
So that her young ones Will have no rest
God in His own mysterious ways
Stirs up His people to watch and pray