Word: muldaur
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Geoff Muldaur, who co-founded the Kweskin Jug Band and was with them up until it disintegrated in 1969, is one of the main reasons Better Days is so different from Butterfield's previous band. Muldaur is an adept slide guitarist who carries several blues styles with him. He also contributes betwixt-and-between vocals (which are even better in live performance) and comes up with enjoyable arrangements. The drummer, Christopher Parker, is perfect in his blues discipline, delivering a steady, unadorned beat. He and bassist Billy Rich make up a solid, healthy rhythm section. Then we come to Butterfield...
Conceivably, the best thing on the album is Better Days's version of Big Joe Williams's "Baby Please Don't Go." The tune is very well mixed, so if you listen through headphones you can hear Muldaur's glassy slide guitar on the left channel and Amos Garrett's lead guitar on the right, both in conversation with Paul's biting harp way up in the mix. Muldaur and Butterfield grind out the vocals una voce and, in the company of Maria Muldaur's (Geoff's wife) restrained fiddle, the band displays one of the best personal interpretations...
...blues very well, and hope she plays "waring Blender Blues," and see Little Feat, talented, but less than heralded. As for Butter, hope Better Days has improved over their appearance of last summer, when Amos Garret couldn't play a simple blues phrase on guitar, and old folkie Geoff Muldaur proved he could no more sing the blues than Diana Ross can sing Billie Holiday...
...vocal, the most fundamental aspect of playing blues guitar. Its overall listen ability was a combination of general enjoyment and the knowledge that there's really not much you can do to the 12 bar blues format. "Walking Blues" opened the set and set its Chicago blues tone. Muldaur's songs, mercifully, were all together, so they were out of the way quickly. His slow blues featured a lot of slurring of words, another major blues vocal tradition but mishandled by him so that it became merely irritating. (If you want to hear what slurring can do, in terms...
...band, unfortunately, doesn't have Bloomfield or Bishop, and that's the origin of its many problems. Butterfield has essentially teamed with an old folkie named Geoff Muldaur and they are sharing the band. My first impulse on hearing Muldaur sing was that he was in the band because he had bought all the equipment, or because he had something on Butterfield. Whatever Muldaur can do, he cannot sing blues. He sings with a false casualness that does not disguise the weakness of his voice, which begins to sound like a pubescent thirteen year old's. He is devoid...