Tracy Nelson

Tracy Nelson is a singer without parallel in terms of both technical ability and emotional directness. John Swenson, writing in Rolling Stone, asserted, "Tracy Nelson proves that the human voice is the most expressive instrument in creation."

Throughout her illustrious career, now spanning five decades, she has never been one to abide boundaries. Certainly, in terms of musical genres, she's been able to meld folk, blues, rock, country and whatever else you might throw at her into her own musical persona.

Growing up in the early 1960s, she immersed herself in R&B, and later what she calls "the folk scare of the sixties." As an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin, she combined her musical passions singing folk and blues at coffeehouses and R&B at frat parties. In 1964 she went to Chicago to record her first album, Deep Are The Roots. A young harmonica player from Memphis named Charlie Musselwhite played on the album and the two would explore the city's famed south side where she met and was inspired by such legendary figures as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Otis Spann and others.

A short time later, Tracy moved to San Francisco and, in the midst of the era's psychedelic explosion, formed Mother Earth. After six Mother Earth albums for Mercury Records and Reprise Records, Nelson continued to record as a solo artist on various labels.

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