Friendly Sex with Maria Muldaur

“The amount of come you’ve inspired over the years!” says Bonnie Raitt. “It’s legendary.”

“Yeah,” says Maria D’Amato Muldaur, “but none of it gets delivered directly.”

“Actually, I’d kinda like to go easy on the sex,” I say.

“Why?” says Maria.

“Well, it tends to get out of proportion. I mean, you’re a musician, not a dancing girl.”

“Look, I don’t care,” says Maria. “I mean, it’s humor. It’s just sort of.. . friendly.”

“Hell,” says Joan, “he’ll probably start his story with it.” * * *

Divine Maria, folkie sex-symbol and earthmother to us all. Who else but Maria could have reconstituted “Chevrolet” — itself a Black variation on an old English folksong called “Paper of Pins” — for a new generation? In the original, English version, this guy is trying to sweet-talk a woman into bed with him, and he offers her all kinds of stuff — a paper of pins, a house and grounds — but she, being properly highminded, will only accept “the keys to his heart,” courtly love. Very moral. The Black version, “Chevrolet,” is. a taste more realistic: the woman is willing to be bought — she’s just holding out for a good price, and finally settles for a “sedan Ford.” But Maria, singing with the Kweskin Jug Band, takes the song a long step further. Her.woman accepts a superball (“I could use a superball,” is the way she sings it), bringing the song full circle back to love, or sex anyway, which goes down better 'than the crass commerce of the sedan Ford.

In any case, Maria’s sexy come-on has always been mediated by intelligence and humor. There’s a crucial difference between a sex symbol and a sex object, and Maria’s incarnation of the Goddess is half playful, and half very proud. In “I’m A Woman,” her old-and-always themesong, she sings, “I can make a man out of you.” On one level the line is merely sexual cock-tease in the old tradition, but there’s an undertone to it that sends chills up and down my spine: an undertone of ancient power.

Furthermore, sex aside, Maria is a musician first and foremost. Has been for 16 years. Her new album on Warners is a good indication of how seriously she’s taking her music, and its nearecstati^ reception by nearly all the critics suggests that Maria’s time . has come at last.

In concert, backed by a fine fourman band featuring David Nichtern on guitar and Jeff Gutcheon on piano, Maria seems more at ease than I’ve ever seen her before: perfectly in control, but not pushing it. Riding the wavefront of music, using the energy* getting off. (“My favorite part is jumping up and down,” she admits.) She does good old blues from the Kweskin days, a fullpower version of Skip James’ “If You Haven’t Any,Hay,” some new songs frqm the album, and a couple of glorious singalong gospel numbers.

“Gospel music isvery important to me,” she says, “Maybe the most important thing. It’s the original music to get off on. If you ever listen to the Abyssinian Baptist Choir, or those Alex Bradford records where they recorded in church, you can hear a whole congregation of people all singing great harmony, all rocking their asses off. It’s not like a rock concert where four guys are creating all the sound, and maybe if they’re lucky a few people who aren’t too stoned out on Quaaludes get up and dance. This is like 400 or 500 people, all making great.music together.”

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MARIA MULDAUR

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I mention that a number of musicians seem to be falling back onto their roots in traditional American music. “Well, I never left it,” says Maria, “so I don’t know. In the case of Memphis Minnie or Skip James, I feel like I can turn a whole new audience onto them. If two people go home and say, ‘Skip James, huh?,’ maybe the next time 'they’re in a record store they’ll check it out. There’s such a world of incredible music that the average American just doesn’t get to hear. It’s available now on a lot of reissue records; we used to have to scrounge around at obscure record stores looking for one cut or another.”

Maria’s songbag isn’t restricted to traditional material alone. Songs by David Nichtern (“Midnight At The Oasis”), Kate McGarrigle (“Work Song”), and Wendy Waldman (“Mad Mad Me”) round things out, making it perfectly clear that Maria has moved beyond the jtig band genre. In light of this, I ask about the rumors of a female supergroup: Maria, Linda Ronstadt and Wendy Waldman. “Well, not a group,” says Maria, “but we’d like to cut a record. “Wendy is really creative with arrangements and harmonies, and... I’d like it to be a blend of what the three of us could be. It’s just a dream. I’m going to do my second record in March, but after that...”

Finally, counting on old friendship to cut the snide, I ask, “Do you think you’re becoming a star?”

“I suppose it could go that way, but I hope not. Basically, I think I’m too much of a beatnik to really be a star.”