community has reciprocated that interest to the point where Muldaur's live performances there now guarantee a large and enthusiastic audience. Louisiana Love Call is the logical outgrowth of Muldaur's love affair with the region's music, a thoughtfully assembled group of songs performed with subtle grace by a handpicked collection of her favorite local players and her longtime collaborator, guitarist Amos Garrett. Infused with the spark of her live shows, the album is a different kind of New Orleans tribute and the best recording of Muldaur's career.

Dr. John is the most visible of Muldaur's New Orleans cronies on Love Call, playing piano on four tracks, including the show-stopping remake of the bawdy Blue Lu Barker classic "Don't You Feel My Leg," and joining her on a pair of erotic vocal duets, "Best of Me" and "Layin Right Here in Heaven." Aaron and Charles Neville chip in with background vocals on the shuffling Professor Longhair tribute "Second Line," and Aaron is also featured on the title track, along with Acadian accordionist Zachary Richard.

Muldaur's selection of material is what makes Love Call such an unusual New Orleans tribute. Instead of covering the usual classics, she compiled an offbeat book for the project from a variety of sources, even commissioning several songs. In the tradition of the great non-writing vocalists, she enforces her identity on the album by using the collective impact of the material to form a larger aesthetic statement tailored to her unique style. Emotionally resonant melodies and sharply drawn images of the South were the criteria she sought out, often to spectacular effect.

In addition to giving herself another shot at "Don't You Feel My Leg" and J.J. Cale's "Cajun Moon," both of which are improved over her previous renditions, Muldaur threw in a few curves. She rewrote parts of Nick Daniels's "Blues Wave" to fit her own history, and her sultry reading of Russell Smith's "Southern Music" caps the proceedings in an appropriately reverential fashion, as she addresses her subject with the poignant question: "Southern music, why are you so sad?" (RS 650)

JOHN SWENSON