Profile
Tracy Nelson
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1999 KBA Award Winner Achievement for Blues on the Internet Presented by the Blues Foundation
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Over the past 36 years Tracy Nelson has amazed audiences with one of the most distinctive, powerful, and soulful voices in modern music. She was born in California in 1944 but raised in Madison, Wisconsin, where, early on, she was exposed to folk and blues music. After entering the University of Wisconsin in the early '60s, Nelson began singing in Madison coffeehouses with an R&B cover band called the Fabulous Imitators. She also frequently traveled to Chicago to listen to the blues. Around 1964 Nelson recorded a folk-blues album for Prestige titled Deep Are the Roots, which was produced by Sam Charters. She also spent time in the Twin Cities as part of the early '60 folk scene where she often played in coffeehouses with Koerner, Ray and Glover. By 1965 Nelson had moved to San Francisco, where she formed the legendary band, Mother Earth in 1967and released their first album, Living With The Animals in 1969 on Mercury Records. Later that year Nelson and Mother Earth resettled in Nashville, Tennessee. She said she left San Francisco in '69 after four years because, it was "way to wacky out there." Nelson eventually parted company with Mother Earth and continued to record as a solo artist with CBS, Atlantic, MCA, and Flying Fish; most of her records were a blend of blues, country, and R&B. In 1993 Nelson recorded In the Here and Now for Rounder Records, her first true blues album since her debut nearly thirty years earlier. In 1998 she teamed up with fellow R&B divas, Marcia Ball and Irma Thomas, recording the hit CD Sing It! on Rounder Records. Tracy Nelson can easily steel any show with her astonishingly powerful vocals. She can belt out a tune with dynamic power and clarity that leaves you sitting in amazement. The Tom Hunter Band will be backing Tracy during the festival.
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