Maria Muldaur – Heart Of Mine: Love Songs Of Bob Dylan

A student of Bob since both ran around Greenwich Village, Maria Muldaur sings Dylan well — not as the Voice of A Generation, but as the Smooth Operator Bob, the Male Sade, or the Romantic with the Pencil Thin Mustache, flowers on the hillside ‘n’ all. Muldaur takes the smooth jazz road, keeping it light and easy all the way through from the opening bars of “Buckets Of Rain”. The thrill is in the choice of the material: the expected, such as “Lay Lady Lay” (reworked into a more gender-friendly “Lay Baby Lay”) and “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”, to the not-so-expected, such as “Make You Feel My Love”, “Heart Of Mine” and “Moonlight”, all done at a refreshingly languid pace. For lagniappe, Muldaur breaks type on the last song, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, and throws in a little yodeling for western authenticity, dropping a subtle hint that a Country Bob album remains to be explored.