Tracy Nelson Country

Originally released in 1969 with some of Music City's most royal musicians holding court, the ten original album tunes and three other remnants of a week-long recording session are included here.



On Elvis Presley's rocker "That's All Right, Mama," Nelson sizzles, and on Boz Scaggs' almost vaudevillian "Now, You're Gone" blues she gives a Broadway-bound performance. On Chuck "The Sheik of the Blues" Willis' soft shuffle "You're Still My Baby," the harmonica and handclaps are so spirited it sounds as if the listener is in the midst of the session. The album's very best selections were the least known. The self-penned "Stay As Sweet As You Are" had a mellow Southern rock feeling with a distinctive country string refrain in the background. "Can't Go On Loving You" is sweetly plaintive, while the desperate "Wait, Wait, Wait" reveals a woman begging her man for one more chance.



A woman trusting a man whom she's found to have cheated on her yet again provides the backdrop for Hank Williams' "You Win Again." With that in mind, Nelson becomes the victim as she makes this a midtempo fifties-style R&B ballad with a keyboard workout that would make Fats Domino proud. To then say that Nelson wails her betrayal on the song would be putting it lightly. She lives it for four minutes and fifteen seconds. In fact, she lives all of these songs. That's how life must be in Tracy Nelson country.