Maria Muldaur - Heart Of Mine (2006)

The incomparable Maria Muldaur has always traversed a wide expanse of American music--in 2003, she recorded A Woman Alone with the Blues, a tribute to jazz icon Peggy Lee--and so perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that she has now applied her interpretive gifts to the love songs of Bob Dylan. Choosing from among his classics ("I'll Be Your Baby Tonight") and lesser-known works ("Golden Loom"), Muldaur bravely recasts several songs in disparate grooves (reggae, Cajun, swing), and even allows keyboardist David Torkanowsky to sneak a few bars of the jazz standard "Ain't Misbehavin'" into the end of "Moonlight." As expected, Muldaur is most at home with lazy, country-blues treatments ("Buckets of Rain"). But she can also effectively pull off the intense drama of total sublimation, especially on "Wedding Song" and "Make You Feel My Love," which she renders so tenderly as to elicit a tear. The title track finds her trying to talk herself out of an unsuitable lover, yet one suspects she won't be able to outsmart her heart. On both "Lay Baby Lay" (the gender-switching version of "Lay Lady Lay") and "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," she eschews Dylan's urgent and poignant sexuality for sensuality, making both songs a study in how the sexes approach the chemistry of love