Maria Muldaur - Naughty Bawdy & Blue (2007)

Building on her Grammy-nominated collections of classic women's blues from the '20s through the '40s (Richland Woman Blues, 2001, and Sweet Lovin' Ol' Soul, 2005), jazz/blues chanteuse Maria Muldaur returns with Naughty, Bawdy & Blue. It's an apt title for a sassy group of songs originally recorded by Victoria Spivey (one of Muldaur's mentors), Alberta Hunter, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and other female urban blues stylists the singer describes as "liberated socially, financially, and most of all sexually from the confines and mores of the times." Backed by the perfect fit of James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band, who often performed with Sippie Wallace and whose sound seems to have time-traveled without alteration, Muldaur moves through a dozen vaudeville blues numbers with integrity and authenticity, and never resorts to campy riffs or faux black dialect. Her expressive soprano has taken on a depth and heft through the years, and she's smart to deliver such suggestive lines as "I love the way he whips my cream" (from "Handy Man") or "He's a deep-sea diver with a stroke that can't go wrong" (from Smith's "Empty Bed Blues") with a subtle wink, preferring to let an insinuating trumpet chase home the joke. The album finds its highlight with "Separation Blues," a duet with Bonnie Raitt, who introduced Wallace to new audiences on her tours of the '70s and '80s. Muldaur and Raitt--corduroy and burlap--harmonize with the ease that comes from decades of friendship, and from the joy of preserving and appreciating one of Americas purest musical forms.