Album · 1971 · 10 Songs. Mother Earth Tracy Nelson.

Her band Mother Earth played the Fillmore Auditorium, sharing bills with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. In the late 1960s, Nelson relocated to Nashville, where she and Mother Earth recorded the album Make A Joyful Noise and the solo effort Tracy Nelson Country. The latter features Nelson's cover of the country classic "Blue, Blue Day". Nelson made a total of six albums with Mother Earth for the Mercury, Reprise, and Columbia labels. She has continued to record as a solo artist for Atlantic and other labels, including MCA, Flying Fish and Adelphi.

The very title of this LP indicated a vagueness as to whether Mother Earth were still a group, or a vehicle for Tracy Nelson's solo career. It's a solid, if laid-back set of rock with strong country and soul flavorings, and a bit of gospel now and then. It sounds a little like Janis Joplin's final solo recordings, but more subdued, both vocally and instrumentally. It was during this period that Nelson wrote and recorded, with Mother Earth, on the album Living with the Animals, her signature song "Down So Low", later covered by Linda Ronstadt, Etta James, and Diamanda Galás.

Mother Earth sponsored/allowed Tracy Nelson to collaborate with numerous great studio musicians to make this great solo album, perhaps her best work. Scotty Moore, DJ Fontrana, the Jordanaires, and many other. The CD re-issue has outtakes, and this degrades the greatness of the original record, in my opinion.

Tracy Nelson - Tennessee Blues 03:51. Tracy Nelson - Thinking Of You 04:07. Tracy Nelson - Mother Earth 02:20. Tracy Nelson - Down So Low 03:48. Tracy Nelson - Goodnight Nelda Grebe, The Telephone Company Has Cut Us Off 02:40. Tracy Nelson - Satisfied 03:57. Tracy Nelson - Won't Be Long 03:33. Tracy Nelson - Tonight, The Sky's About To Cry 05:00.

I heard Tracy Nelson sing the song "Mother Earth" on my local public radio, loved it and wanted to learn more about the song and the artist.

Tracy Nelson has always been something of an unknown. Yet Tracy possessed a far warmer, flexible, and expressive voice than Janis, which, as good as it was, always did pretty much the same thing. Tracy Nelson fans are often jealous of Janis Joplin's legend. On numerous occasions I have put "Down So Low" on to play to unsuspecting and unitiated friends. This album is marvelous testimony to just how good Tracy Nelson is. I do have a slight bone to pick with it. The title is a bit misleading: Mother Earth had many very, very good songs that featured other people singing lead than Tracy Nelson, and all of those songs were omitted. I think there are several reasons one can point to for Tracy Nelson's failure to become as large a legend as Janis Joplin. One is pointed to by Al Kooper in the liner notes accompanying the CD: she isn't easy to categorize.

Tracy Nelson/Mother Earth (also known as just Mother Earth) is an album that was released in early 1972 by the blues rock group Mother Earth. The band's fifth studio album, it was distributed by the label Reprise Records Stylistically, the release features a laid-back, subdued sound in its rendering of blues music mixed with pop rock, with three cover versions of Bobby Charles' songs included.