Maria Muldaur, “The First Lady of Roots Music,” has recorded a few albums which honor female blues vocalists. However, her latest record is just a bit different. It is still a tribute, but in the case of One Hour Mama, the feeling goes even deeper, as Muldaur explores the legacy of Victoria Spivey, who was not only a musical but a personal influence.
Muldaur first met Spivey (who was born in Houston in 1906) in New York City during the early ’60s. At that point, Spivey, who recorded a number of popular (and often bawdy) blues sides during the ‘20s and ’30s had, largely out of necessity, formed her own record label. In doing so, she gave recording opportunities to herself and other artists whose careers had flourished decades before but, over time, had begun to experience profound indifference on the part of record companies. However, Spivey was far from stuck in the past. She had a keen interest in the musical revolution that was brewing around her.
Spivey took a personal interest in Muldaur, then a fledgling singer and fiddle player, giving her tips on music and style as she launched her career. It is only fitting, then, that Muldaur is saluting her mentor with One Hour Mama: The Blues of Victoria Spivey, named after a song that Spivey recorded in 1937.
Speaking from her home base in the San Francisco Bay Area, Muldaur recalls, “She was always on the scene scouting for new talent.” When Spivey began working with the Even Dozen Jug Band (whose members included David Grisman and John Sebastian), she gave some advice to the naive newbies. “She went to one of their rehearsals and told them, ‘Now you boys, you boys sound good and you play good, but you need some sex appeal up there. You get that little gal that I saw down in the park – the one with the pigtails that plays the fiddle – you get her in your band, and you’ll really have something.’”
The “little gal” was, of course, Muldaur. After she agreed to join the jug band, Spivey provided invaluable guidance. “Victoria Spivey took me under her wing,” Muldaur recalls. “She would take me to her apartment, and she would play me old 78s of early blues artists – Bessie Smith and people like that. She was the first person to expose me to Memphis Minnie, who also became another lifetime hero of mine.
“She was trying to find songs that would be suitable for my young voice, because in those days, I had the voice of an ingenue. It took me 60 years to develop the low blues voice that I have now. She also liked to give me advice and pointers on how to perform. She would say things like, ‘Now, Honey, when you get up there, it ain’t good enough to sound good, you’ve got to look good too. You’ve got to get up there and strut your stuff and make all eyes be on you.’ And then she would lean in and point her finger very dramatically at me and say, ‘That’s what they call stage presence!’”
Muldaur’s decision to record an album featuring Spivey’s music came in the form of an epiphany. “Two years ago, I was at the Memphis Blues Music Awards, and they asked me to make a few remarks. They knew my connection to [Spivey], and they were going to induct her into the Blues Hall of Fame, so I was honored and happy to do so. They ended up giving me the plaque because there was no one there from her family.
“As I went to my seat with the plaque, a big light bulb went on over my head and I realized, ‘Wow, you’ve done tributes to Memphis Minnie and Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and Sippie Wallace and so forth, and here’s the person that originally gave you your start.’ She just gave me so much encouragement and support. So right at that moment I said, ‘If it’s the last album I make, I should do a tribute to Victoria Spivey and bring it all back around full-circle.”
One Hour Mama features a variety of musicians, many of whom Muldaur has worked with before. “As I always do, since my first solo record [1973’s Maria Muldaur, which contained “Midnight at the Oasis”], I think about the genre of whatever it is I’m longing to record, and I think, ‘Who are the best players in that genre?’”
In the case of One Hour Mama, revered blues artists Elvin Bishop and Taj Mahal fit the bill, but so did a group of young musicians from New Orleans. “I had done an album a few years ago of vintage jazz from the ‘20s and ‘30s with a great band of young street musicians named Tuba Skinny,” Muldaur says. “They’re just amazing. There are a million people out there – in Dixieland bands and trad jazz bands and so forth – but these kids are not just playing the music, they’re channeling the whole vibration of that music from an earlier era. And they play it with such reverence and such joy and such skill.”
As an artist who has been active on the music scene for over 60 years, what is her take on the current state of things? From her perspective, what has changed? “Back in the day, we would call it, kind of derogatorily, the music business. Now it’s the music industry. That’s ten times more corporate,” Muldaur says. “It’s so commercially driven, even though at the heart of all this, there are some artists somewhere who are trying honestly to express their artistic hearts. And it’s gotten so formularized and mechanized and commercialized, but I don’t pay any attention to that. I still just delight in finding wonderful local players or a great old jazz tune or whatever.
“The quality and essence of this music doesn’t change, it just kind of keeps getting better and better. Despite the fact that there is no above-ground media promotion of this kind of music that I’m talking about. You’re not going to hear about it on “Entertainment Tonight” or on any TV show, People magazine or anything like that. But it’s grassroots music, and what does “grassroots” do? It spreads by its own little self. And that’s why there are more people enjoying this music today.
“And I don’t just mean in America. You go to Europe, and there are American artists working there all the time. There’s just hundreds of blues and jazz festivals, bluegrass festivals and so forth. This is something that the corporate entities can’t touch. They have no claim to it, and this is just something that people want to do because it’s good for the body and good for the soul.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
