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all her efforts by introducing me to her musical love which was she called it cowboy music. It was early country and
western music of the era, mind you it was the 1940s when I was a little girl and so, country and western artists like
Hank Williams and Kitty Wells and Hank Thompson, Ernest Tubb, all those classic country western artists were on
the radio. We were in New York City, but we could tune in the station from New Jersey, and my aunt used to have
me listen to that. And the very first song I can remember singing was Kitty Wells' ‘It Wasn't God Who Made Honky
Tonk Angels’, and that was at age five – didn’t know what I was singing about, but I was singing it with all my little
heart.

FD: That's a classic song to sing as your first song, too. Now, let’s talk about the new album, “One Hour Mama, The
Blues of Victoria Spivey”. How did you first meet her? Was that in Washington Square when you were performing?
When did you first meet Victoria?

MM: For those who might not know, Victoria Spivey was a black woman, a blues singer whose big heyday was in
the 1920s. She was one of the several, what we call the classic blues queens, along with Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey,
Sippie Wallace, people like that, and actually, were among America's first big radio artists who had big hits. The classic
blues queens were different from, say, the Delta blues artists, because when you think about early blues, you usually
think about someone playing guitar, maybe two guitars. But these gals made their mark by singing accompanied by
people like Louis Armstrong. They mostly had what you would call now an early jazz band sound backing them,
although they were singing blues. So anyway, Victoria Spivey was amongst them, but maybe one of the lesser-known
ones.

She had survived the following decades of the popularity of that music. She
was a real survivor, and she had moved up to New York City. And in the early
1960s, she was the first artist I know of, at any rate, to be savvy enough to
have started her own record label, Spivey Records. She was out on the scene
all the time talent scouting for her artists to record on her label. I think she
started the label partly to provide recording opportunities for some of the
older blues pioneers you know, blues veterans who were about from her
generation that were no longer signed to labels and so forth. And she
recorded quite a few of them. But she also had her eye out for young talent
up and coming. And as some people know, she was the first person to ever
record Bob Dylan long before Columbia Records ever got hold of him.

Another friend of mine, David Grisman, who is a world-renowned virtuoso
on the mandolin. But we were all just young and knocking around and just
trying out different things and experimenting with different music. And the
two of them and another handful of guys had put together a jug band. They must have found some old jug band
recordings. And they started, they put together a band called the Even Dozen Jug Band. Victoria Spivey had seen
them and she said it reminded her of the music that was popular back in her day and she said she'd give them a
record deal so apparently she went to one of their rehearsals to see how they were coming along for the upcoming
recording and she ended up going up to them and saying now you boys sound okay you guys are playing well but
you all need some sex-appeal up there. She said, you get that gal, that little gal I saw playing the fiddle, the one down
in Washington Square Park, she said, you get her in your band and you'll really have something. So they came to me
and told me this. And my first question was, well, what's a jug band? And they explained that to me. And then I just
said, well, sounds like fun, so sign me up. And so at that point there's this seasoned, old blues singer, Victoria Spivey,
who took me under her wing and took me to her apartment and would play me these old scratchy 78s of different
blues artists.

She was trying to find songs that would be appropriate for me to sing with my - at the time - very young fledgling
voice. I wanted to sound like Bessie Smith but it took me about 60 years before I developed a blues voice but you
know come to think of it, when I listened to her recordings she didn't have a big low shouting blues voice we normally
think of, she had a much lighter voice herself. Maybe when she heard me it reminded her of herself and her youth.
But for whatever reason, she took me under her wing and played me all these great old blues recordings. And that's
when I first heard Memphis Minnie and Bessie Smith and so many of those, as well, of course, as her recordings. She
would give me pointers. She'd say, “Now, honey, you listen to me. It ain't enough to sound good… you got to look
good, too.”