Grammy Awards: Mill Valley singer nominated for blues album

Maria Muldaur has had her fair share of musical adventures.

The Mill Valley resident has opened for the Grateful Dead, been a part of beloved groups such as the Jerry Garcia Band, Even Dozen Jug Band and Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band and played Carnegie Hall multiple times along with other special venues around the world.

She has had songs hit the Billboard Hot 100, including her 1973 mega-hit “Midnight at the Oasis,” and shared the stage with her “musical heroes” Aaron Neville, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt and Taj Mahal.

But for her latest album, “One Hour Mama: The Blues of Victoria Spivey,” her 44th, she decided to pay tribute to Spivey, who discovered her in the early 1960s while she was performing in Washington Square Park in New York City and encouraged her along in her musical career.

The album, which came out last summer, is nominated for a Grammy in the traditional blues category. It is Muldaur’s seventh nomination.

“At this point in my life and my journey, it felt like the perfect thing to do, and it does feel like coming around full circle,” said Muldaur, 83, who will attend the Grammy Awards ceremony on Sunday.

On Valentine’s Day, she’ll perform sultry, romantic songs for a hometown crowd at the Sweetwater Music Hall at 8 p.m. Admission is $37.60. Get tickets and more information at sweetwatermusichall.org.

“The wonderful thing, and why I’ve always loved the early blues, is because these women sang about love and lust in a way that was very unabashed, uninhibited and very sexy, but without being too graphic. That was always done by innuendo and double entendre, so the songs are so clever and playful,” said Muldaur, who will perform songs from “One Hour Mama” and other selections from blues women whose material she’s covered for a while.

Muldaur took the time to talk about her recent nomination and her upcoming “Music for Lovers” show.

Q: Congrats on your recent Grammy nomination. Tell me about what inspired the album.

A: Thank you so much. I decided to do a tribute to this wonderful blues woman who was a contemporary of Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and all the classic blues queens of the ’20s and ’30s. She had survived the ensuing decades when that music wasn’t that popular anymore and then moved to New York and had her own record label called Spivey Records. I was hanging out on the folk scene, or as my old friend John Sebastian calls it, “the folk scare of the early ’60s.”

She spotted me because I was always jamming, learning to play the Appalachian fiddle and also singing blues and bluegrass. Some friends of mine had started a jug band, and it was called the Even Dozen Jug Band, and it included former Marin resident, now world-famous mandolin virtuoso David Grisman, John Sebastian and a lot of other young musicians. Spivey saw them fooling around with jug band music and decided to record them, and then after going to one of their rehearsals to see how they were coming along for the recording, she ended up telling them, “You guys play well, but y’all need some sex appeal up there.” She told them to “get that little gal I saw in Washington Square Park, the one playing the fiddle. You get her in your band and you’ll really have something.” They asked me to join the band, and my first question was, “Well, what’s a jug band?”

After they explained that, I thought it sounded like fun. At that point, she took me under her wing. She took me to her apartment and started playing me all these old, scratchy 78s with blues records, trying to find songs that were suitable for my, at the time, totally undeveloped young voice.

She also gave me a lot of pointers on how to perform. She took a liking to me and decided to encourage me. She would say things like, “Now, honey, when you get up there, it ain’t enough to sound good. You got to look good too.” She would say, “You’ve got to get up there and strut your stuff and make all eyes be on you.” She would lean in and look at me very meaningfully and say, “That’s what they call stage presence.”

Now, I’m making my 44th album, and it suddenly dawned on me that I owed her such a debt of gratitude for really discovering me and picking me out of a crowd and encouraging me before I even believed in myself. That’s why I decided to do this album in tribute to her.

Q: What have been your past Grammy experiences?

A: I got two nominations back in 1974 for “Midnight at the Oasis.” And then in the last 20 years or so, I’ve gotten another five, all for making albums that were a tribute to various blues pioneers, which is very gratifying because this is not commercial music by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s why I love this music so much because even though a lot of it emerged and was originally created in the 1920s, here we are a century later, and the music still is relevant and resonates with people. Last time I was nominated, it was for a tribute album I did to another wonderful blues woman whom I became friends with, Blue Lu Barker.

I feel like if I do win, I’ll be representing the feminine side of the blues. When you say “blues,” most people see a guy wailing away on a guitar. But the truth of the matter is, the women who first recorded blues were pioneers and the first artists to have great big hits. In the early ’20s, they were selling lots of albums, people like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Victoria Spivey.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed. But either way, I’m in great company, and it’s a great honor to be nominated.

Q: You’ve paid tribute to other blues legends. Did this album feel like one of your most personal yet?

A: Absolutely. Spivey was entrepreneurial. She not only was one of the first artists savvy enough to have her own record label, but she also had a blues newsletter and reviewed different acts back in the day. Someone sent me this review she did of my first performance at the Newport Folk Festival with Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band, which I later joined, which was a very popular band in the early ’60s. We made five albums, and we were on every TV show that existed at the time and played all over the country. The first band that Bobby Weir had with Jerry Garcia was modeled after Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band.

Also, I’m just heartbroken over the loss of Bobby, who was a friend and such a kind, gentle, generous, sweet soul. It was not just a loss for music lovers and Deadheads everywhere, but I feel like it leaves a big hole in the fabric of our little community here in Mill Valley.

In ’64, I played my first big concert with the jug band, and Spivey was in the audience, and she wrote this amazing review that I never saw until just a few years ago. I was so touched. It was like she was reaching down from blues heaven to pat me on the back.

Q: I get the sense that performing means so much to you.

A: During the pandemic, when everybody was shut in and we couldn’t perform live, a lot of performers started going stir-crazy and performing in their living rooms and streaming it for people. But then when they started to have live shows again, that’s when everybody realized how important live music is. My favorite gigs are hometown gigs that bring the community together. It’s not just about the flashy talent of the people that are performing on stage. It’s also about the fact that people are physically coming together into a space to enjoy something together. It was so apparent when people just started trepidatiously coming out to live shows.

Before all that happened, people would come up to me and say, “Oh, I love your voice. I love your singing. Oh, your guitar player is so good.” But when we emerged, people would come up and grab my hand and say, “Thank you. I really needed this.”

Q: Anything else you would like to share?

A: People have been bugging me to write my memoirs forever. I just kept saying, “Yeah, I’ll do them when I sort of retire.” But since that’s not happening (laughs), I’m just determined that this is the year I’m going to get all those stories down and into book form. I’ve started it, so I feel good.