"Naughty, Bawdy & Blue"

When most people think of the blues they think of a man with a guitar at the crossroads or on a back porch in the Mississippi Delta. But America's fascination with the blues began with a recording by a woman, a Vaudeville singer in New York City backed by a jazz band. The year was 1921, the singer was Mamie Smith, and the record was, "Crazy Blues." It sold over a million copies and demonstrated that there was a huge market for records by and for African-Americans. Record companies went into a feeding frenzy, signing women to sing what has come to be known as the "Classic Blues."

Over the next decade the likes of Mamie, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Sippie Wallace, and Victoria Spivey would sell millions of records, travel the country in their own Pullman railroad cars, and play to sold out houses wherever they went. As Maria Muldaur says in Boogie & the Blues Diva , "These women were America's first Pop Stars."

At the 2004 Motor City Blues & Boogie Woogie Festival Maria and James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band  recreated the look, the feel, and the sound of this seminal period in American musical history. But the concert and television program represent but two of three parts of the project. During the week before the performance Maria and the band recorded over a dozen songs at Solid Sound in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The result is the new album on Stony Plain Records ,  "Naughty, Bawdy & Blue." The album is dedicated to Maria's friends Sippie Wallace and Victoria Spivey, and includes a duet with Bonnie Raitt on Sippie's "Hesitation Blues." You can hear samples of all the songs in Maria's Musical Oasis.

Maria will be touring extensively to support the new album - check the schedule here  - and will be performing with James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band on Sunday September 3 at the largest free jazz festival in North America, the Detroit International Jazz Festival , held annually in downtown Detroit.

 

 


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