Waitress In A Donut Shop

'Midnight at the Oasis' was very often on the radio when I was five years old, and occasionally thereafter. I wasn't especially fond of it as a young child, though it has since grown on me. For a long time I wouldn't have been able to link that song with Maria Muldaur's name, and it was probably only within the last 5-10 years that the connection was established in my mind, a connection that chimed when I saw a copy of Waitress in a Donut Shop on sale locally last summer, I was happy to wager a few pounds on it (and another few on Barry White's Can't Get Enough) in the hope I might like them.

It proved a small risk well worth taking. Barry White, of course, is a genius, and Waitress in a Donut Shop, while not the sort of album that tends to feature on "Best Of" lists, is excellent entertainment, beautifully made. Having a supporting cast of such notable artistes as Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner, Linda Ronstadt, Spooner Oldham, Paul Butterfield, Klaus Voormann, Mac Rebennack & Ray Brown can't have hurt - though of course there are even starrier constellations that have produced music which is no good at all.

Side A kicks off in old-timey big-band style with Fats Waller's 'Squeeze Me', a sound revisited on 'Sweetheart' and the marvellous 'It Ain't the Meat, it's the Motion'. 'Gringo en Mexico' features some mariachi-esque brass and requinto guitar, but doesn't feel too untoward a piece musical of tourism for that. Lieber & Stoller's 'I'm a Woman' is given a heartily down-home arrangement; while 'Honey Babe Blues' smells even more like the country. 'Brickyard Blues' is a well-polished gem of a song, perhaps my favourite on the record, setting things up very nicely for the closing number 'Travelin' Shoes', fervently delivered acapella by Muldaur et al.

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Complete String Quartets

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This is a Recording

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