During a recording career that now spans 46 years, Maria Muldaur has
applied her gritty contralto pipes with aplomb to blues, pop, early
jazz, and even contemporary Christian music, yet she made her initial
mark in jug bands, first with the Even Dozen, then Jim Kweskin’s. Much
like ex-husband and former Kweskin bandmate Geoff Muldaur has with his
Texas Sheiks, she now returns to the jug-band realm with Good Time
Music for Hard Times using a cast of players that includes David
Grisman and John Sebastian (both Even Dozen alumni), Suzy Thompson
(also a member of the Texas Sheiks), Taj Mahal, and Danny Caron.
The disc’s upbeat spirit is especially well reflected in a couple
original songs by Dan Hicks, but Maria reaches way back for most of the
program, which includes numbers by the Mississippi Sheiks, Clifford
Hayes and the Louisville Stompers, Hezekiah Jenkins, Martha Copeland,
and Emmett Miller. Although most of the material is antique, Maria
manages to make it relevant to the present, particularly in her
adaptation of Jenkins’ 1931 ragtime blues “The Panic Is On,” in which
she sings, Them greedy politicians ruined everything, but now I’m
here to sing/Obama is in the White House, saying, “Yes we can”/I know
we’re gonna come up with a real good plan, and then them doggone hard
times will be gone. (Stony Plain)
