“There are only three white blues singers,” said Richard Thompson. “Geoff Muldaur is at least two of them.”
Muldaur is one of the most important figures of the American folk revival of the 1960s. It’s no exaggeration to say he was as much a force in the early days of that era as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, or anyone else to spin a tune and pass the basket in the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village or Cambridge. And tomorrow night he’ll be doing just that—well, probably not passing the basket—in Rosendale, New York, when he visits the Rosendale Cafe.
Muldaur initially rose to prominence with the highly influential Jim Kweskin Jug Band, which also featured his then wife, singer Maria Muldaur. He went on to play with Paul Butterfield, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Von Schmidt, Jerry Garcia, and many others. He dropped out of site in the 1980s to concentrate on film and TV scoring (his “Brazil” was used in Terry Gilliam’s movie of the same name), but has since re-emerged as a touring artist and a frequent guest on Garrison Keillor’s NPR program “A Prairie Home Companion.”
Here he is playing “Wild Ox Moan”:
Geoff Muldaur will perform at the Rosendale Cafe on April 25 at 8pm. Tickets are $20. For information, call (845) 658-9048 or visit http://www.rosendalecafe.com/.
This article appears in April 2014.
