Maria Muldaur - Don't You Make Me High (Don't You Feel My Leg)

 #Maria Muldaur #folk #blues #country #jazz #folk rock #Americana #pop rock #1960s #1970s

Blue Lu Barker was a New Orleans singer married to the guitarist Danny Barker. They wrote this very sensual song, with Blue Lu singing, "Don't you feel my leg 'cause if you feel my leg you're gonna feel my thigh, and if you feel my thigh, you're gonna go up high." This was pushing the limits in 1938. The song was produced by J. Mayo Williams, who was one of the biggest blues music producers of the '30s and '40s. For Barker, this was her first single after signing with the Vocalion label, and it became a national hit, leading to appearances with Cab Calloway and Jelly Roll Morton. The Barkers appeared at the New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1989, and in 1998, this appearance was released as the album Live at New Orleans Jazz Festival. Danny died in 1994 and Blue Lu in 1998.
Maria Muldaur brought new life to this song when she recorded it for her 1974 self-titled album, with the title altered to "Don't You Make Me High (Don't You Feel My Leg)." That same year, Muldaur had her big hit "Midnight At The Oasis," and when she rose to stardom, she stopped performing "Feel My Leg," as she didn't want to be known for her sexuality. In her interview with Rolling Stone that year, she explained: "It's a funky song, fun to do, but I had to stop doing it. That's my concession to avoid being typecast as a sexy singer, period. I dropped it after I saw a Marilyn Monroe TV special early this year. I saw her entertaining the troops in Korea, up there singing 'I Can't Give You Anything but Love' to acres and acres of horny GIs. Shelley Winters was on the show and she said something about how far Marilyn might have gone if she hadn't let herself get stuck with an image as a sex symbol who couldn't do anything else. That shook me. You can't rely on physical image alone. That's sure as shit gonna fade. The shape of your tits and butt ain't always going to be so good. I want to be a singer long after I'm not so hot to look at."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/blue-lu-barker/dont-you-feel-my-leg


Maria Muldaur - My Tennessee Mountain Home

 #Maria Muldaur #folk #blues #country #jazz #folk rock #Americana #pop rock #1960s #1970s

In autumn 1962, the young blues fanatics Joe Boyd and Geoff Muldaur arrived at the Cornell Folk Festival in Ithaca, New York, too late to hear the performers they’d come to see, Doc Watson and Sleepy John Estes. As Boyd recounts in his memoir White Bicycles, they stuck around for a post-gig party where the musicians and fans unwound and sang old gospel tunes. “We noticed a dark-haired beauty with a long black braid accompanying the Watson party on fiddle or keeping time with a set of bones. Geoff was too shy to talk to her, but swore he would marry her.”
The young lady was the Greenwich Village-born Maria Grazia Rosa Domenica D’Amato, and she did marry Geoff, performing with him in the old-timey Jim Kweskin Jug Band, and eventually recording two albums as a duo for Reprise Records, 1969’s Pottery Pie and Sweet Potatoes in 1972. By 1973, their marriage was over and Geoff joined Paul Butterfield’s band Better Days just as Maria Muldaur’s career was about to skyrocket. She recorded her first solo album, supervised by two men she called “the dynamic duo,” her old friend Boyd and Warner/Reprise staff producer Lenny Waronker. “I had heard what Lenny did for Randy Newman and Ry Cooder, and I just loved what he could do with acoustic material,” she told the writer Jacoba Atlas. “There’s a total presence there that a lot of acoustic bands miss.” Boyd, who’d produced Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, the Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention, among others, once told the British writer Penny Valentine his job was simple: “I just keep anything bad from happening. I keep the path clear, love the music I’m working with, and have the experience in my ears to know what doesn’t sound right.”
A spectacular group of musicians was brought in for the sessions, including guitarists Cooder, David Lindley and former Byrd Clarence White, drummers Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon, fiddler Richard Greene, pianists Dr. John, Jim Dickinson and Spooner Oldham, Bill Keith on banjo and steel guitar, and Klaus Voorman, Ray Brown and Chris Ethridge playing bass. It’s difficult to imagine a better combination of talents for the situation.
Released in August 1973, Maria Muldaur is a potent blend of country, blues, folk and pop, and it still sounds fresh. Muldaur wasn’t a songwriter, but her instincts for picking material were spot on. She gave crucial exposure to several unknown or under-appreciated songwriters, including Kate McGarrigle (“The Work Song”), Wendy Waldman (“Mad Mad Me” and “Vaudeville Man”), Dolly Parton (“My Tennessee Mountain Home”) and David Nichtern, whose “Midnight at the Oasis” became Muldaur’s sole Billboard top 10 hit when released as a single.  From: https://bestclassicbands.com/maria-muldaur-solo-debut-album-review-5-19-20/