Mother Earth - Living With the Animals
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Artist: Mother EarthEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2004-10-12
Music Label: Wounded Bird Records
Free Music Notes for Living With the Animals
Free Music Review: Living With the Animals Here On Mother Earth
Hit: 5 Stars
I remember reading about the band Mother Earth and their incredible singer Tracy Nelson in '68 in the old HIT PARADER magazine. In those days, ROLLING STONE had yet to hit the magazine racks in my smallish home town in Maine, and CRAWDADDY might very occasionally show up in some tobacco shop or somewhere off the beaten track, but Jim Delahant's HIT PARADER was just about the only intelligent music rag that I could find month after month.
And they were saying that this chick, Tracy Nelson, was BETTER than Janis Joplin, Grace Slick or any other female rock singer of the era (not that there really WERE all that many, but they were emerging around then--and of course, for many fans it was tantamount to sacrelege to say that ANYBODY was better than Janis).
So I got ahold of the band's first record LIVING WITH THE ANIMALS and truly did fall in love with Tracy Nelson's singing. It had the control and subtlety that the others (whom I also loved) lacked. This was a young but very disciplined singer, one whose roots went deep and whose future looked very bright.
And I loved the band just as much. Like most SF bands of the era, the "chick singer," no matter how stellar, was not the sole focus of the group. In fact, the spotlight opening and closing tracks of LWTA were not Tracy Nelson tunes, but were penned by Texas born hippie balladeer, RP St. John (who also palled around with Joplin and wrote "Bye Bye Baby" for her and Big Brother). The trade off worked well, since the two singers' diverse styles--while night and day in so many ways--complemented each other beautifully. Tracy's blues and gospel flavored numbers were what justified the band's appropriation of the Memphis Slim classic number (included here as track 2) at their band name, but St. John's quirky, ironic, and just a tad off-the-wall numbers were what rooted them firmly in 1968--and 1968 San Fran at that.
I was shouting cries of "Hallelujah" when the independent label Wounded Bird released the bulk of the early Tracy Nelson and Mother Earth catalogue a few years back. I had never expected them to be released on CD at all. Warners had culled the Tracy tracks from the band's various releases and released a BEST OF TRACY NELSON/MOTHER EARTH album in the early '90s. At the time that seemed like a mini-miracle, but it actually was something of a mis-representation of the band as a whole (well, at least the very earliest version of the band). I mean it when I say there is no better singer on the planet than Tracy Nelson--but I missed R.P.'s tracks from this record, to say nothing of the multiple singers from their second release MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE.
So God bless Wounded Bird for re-releasing pretty much the entire Mercury/Warners catalogue--with most of the original artwork in tact. The flow of LIVING WITH THE ANIMALS is just about AS important as the great songs themselves. Tracy has a number of show stoppers here, including such classics as "Mother Earth"--with guest artist Michael Bloomfield on guitar--"Cry On" and the original recording of her signature song "Down So Low." Those tunes are so overpowering that you may not fully appreciate the shorter, more understated "It Won't Be Long" or "Good Night Nelda Grebe..." at first hearing. But in fact, all of Tracy's numbers on this records can rightfully be considered classics. And framed as they are by the charmingly eccentric--and downright poetic--musings of RP St. John, well, there's no way you can go wrong with this classic release.
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