Tracy Nelson - Victim Of The Blues (2011)

Two-time Grammy nominated vocalist Tracy Nelson makes her Delta Groove debut with a strong return to her roots on her latest effort Victim of the Blues. Although best known for her work with the blues rock group Mother Earth in the late 1960's, Nelson has always had an affinity for the real deep traditional blues art form as evidenced on her very first album, Deep Are The Roots, recorded in Chicago back in 1964. Victim of the Blues finds Nelson fully embracing her blues and gospel roots on an inspired program of material that features songs by Jimmy Reed, Otis Spann, Howlin' Wolf, and Ma Rainey, along with appearances by special guests Angela Strehli and Marcia Ball.

With Victim of the Blues, her 26th album in just over five decades, she has circled fully, back to the original music from South Side Chicago that mesmerized her teenaged mind in the mid-1960s.

''Several years ago,'' Nelson reveals now, ''I was driving with a friend across Montana, tooling down I-90 hauling a 1962 Bambi II Airstream trailer, the one that looks like a toaster. We were making a trip to Hebron, North Dakota where my grandfather homesteaded and built up a 2000+ acre ranch which he sold in the early '60s.''

The current owners were about to tear down the old claim shack and she wanted to go back there one last time. The car windows were down and national blues DJ Bill Wax was on XM Satellite Radio - the great Otis Spann's One More Mile, from his 1964 Prestige album, rolled out of the truck speakers. ''It had always been a song I wanted to do'' Nelson recalls, ''and that started me thinking about all the great Chicago blues songs and artists I had heard in my formative years, especially Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. This was around the time I made my first record, Deep Are the Roots.''

She thought too of just a few years ago when she was touring nationally as part of a well-known Chicago blues revue, playing a lot of blues festivals. ''The music I heard back in the day in Chicago and what I was hearing from the current crop of blues acts bore little relation to each other.''

From that memorable day in the Badlands hearing One More Mile, she decided it was time to make a record with, she says, ''some of those fine old songs and be as true and authentic to the style as a Norwegian white girl (is that redundant?) from Wisconsin could manage it.''

The new album, Victim of the Blues, is a hand-picked collection of songs, most written by Nelson's early heroes: Muddy Waters (One More Mile), Jimmy Reed (Shoot Him), Percy Mayfield (Stranger in My Own Hometown), Lightning Hopkins (Feel So Bad), Joe Tex (The Love You Save) and Howlin' Wolf (Howlin' for My Baby). She has chosen 11 songs of the day, ones that were spilling out of AM radios from second-story apartments, rolled-down car windows, and live from darkened clubs with exotic names like El Macambo.

In late July, 2010, Nelson was featured on NPR's Weekend Edition, a little more than a month after the tragic fire that took the 100+ year old farmhouse she shared with longtime partner Mike Dysinger. She was just beginning to deal with the aftermath of losing her home and many of her personal belongings. ''The firemen told us they could save one room - we had to decide - we said 'the studio.''' This album, Victim of the Blues, is the album that miraculously survived the fire. And that is the reason that the first people Nelson thanks in this album's notes are the Burns, Tennessee Volunteer Fire Department.

To date, there have been several benefits across the country to assist the two in rebuilding their farmhouse on the land they love. Seeing as how her first Grammy nomination was for After the Fire Is Gone, with Willie Nelson, she would say drolly, ''It seemed like the perfect thing to call these events.''

Nelson had titled this album before the fire, so the irony is not missed on her. Victim of the Blues is as deeply felt as anything she she has recorded in her exceptional career. She is a soul survivor.

Tracklist:

01. You'll Be Mine
02. Lead A Horse To Water
03. Shoot My Baby
04. I Know It's A Sin
05. Victim Of The Blues
06. Howlin' For My Baby
07. One More Mile
08. Stranger In My Own Home Town
09. The Love You save
10. Feel So Bad
11. Without Love

Filesonic.com