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BluesWax Sittin’ In With

Tracy Nelson

Part Two

Redefining “Victim of The Blues”

By Don Wilcock

In Part One one of my interview with Tracy Nelson she recalled a time playing with Pinetop Perkins in the Muddy Waters Allstars. He was in his late eighties, and she offered to get him some food from the buffet. When she came back with it, he smiled and said, “You’re so sweet, and I ain’t even tasted you yet.”

For a little girl of Norwegian descent who grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, in the early 1960s listening to R&B on late night radio, Nelson has come a long way. Her breakthrough band was Mother Earth, but she insists the name was never intended to be a reflection of personal style.

She recalls, “We didn’t even have a name for the band yet. I wanted to call the band Siddhartha and The Mandellas. You know 1960′s hippies didn’t have much of a sense of humor, so we didn’t go with that, but I didn’t even choose the name. Then, of course, it sort of got stuck on me. We should have seen that coming, but we really didn’t. If I went with my instincts all of the time instead of just most of the time, I’d be a disaster. [People say] ‘You’re happy. Why aren’t you more famous?’ And I say, ‘Because I go with my instincts.’”

In April she released her twenty-sixth album in five decades, Victim of The Blues on Delta Groove. Although the album title is derived from a Ma Rainey song and was chosen before the devastating fire that destroyed most of the mementoes of her career, the title does seem to offer an eerie reference to that event.

Produced by her long-time creative partner and husband Mike Dysinger, Victim of the Blues is not at all about the fire but rather a return to her first love, classic blues with covers that include Howlin’ Wolf‘s “Howlin’ for My Baby,” Jimmy Reed‘s “I Know It’s A Sin,” and Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Feel So Bad.” While the arrangements all sound authentic, they don’t necessarily mimic the originals. All are songs that Nelson says she wanted to release while she’s still able to because at age sixty-six, she has no guarantees this won’t be her last recording.

Don Wilcock for BluesWax: Let’s talk a little bit about this album.

Tracy Nelson: We probably should, shouldn’t we?

BW: Yeah, one of the things I love about the album is that Jim Pugh and and Mike Henderson’s work it’s understated, is traditional, but it’s not the traditional to that song. In other words, it doesn’t sound like you’re “covering” the song.

TN: No, I mean, these guys and I use them in different capacities on most of my records. You get what you get. I have never ever tried to tell ’em I want this to sound like that, or I want this kind of a feel. I give ’em the song, and they play it, and I always love what they bring to it. So yeah, that’s true. None of them are – we did “The Thing I Used to Do” and left it off the record because that’s the one time I felt we didn’t bring anything to any of it. It sounded like a cover. That rarely happens. These guys just love this kind of music and bring their own deal to it, and so it always comes out sounding creatively unique. That’s why I love them.

BW: Especially on the Jimmy Reed stuff. His stuff is so iconic and so I don’t know. Every time anybody does Jimmy Reed they just copy Jimmy Reed.

TN: [She scats the Jimmy Reed beat.]

BW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you didn’t do that.

TN: No, and I rarely do. I personally can’t think of a song that I’ve done that was exactly like the original.

BW: Right, right. And the other thing I like about you is that you don’t stick to a genre.

TN: Yeah – ha.

BW: That’s a knowing laugh.

TN: That’s my answer when people say, “Why aren’t you rich?” I just keep jumping around. I can’t get in one pocket. I just can’t. I literally can’t!

BW: Really!

TN: When I just started making records for Rounder, I hadn’t made a record in ten or twelve years. So through the ’80s I might as well have just taught school. Thank God for a couple of jingles.

BW: Really? That really saved your ass, doing jingles?

TN: Yeah.

BW: What did you do?

TN: Well, there was a Busch beer jingle. It ran for four or five years.

BW: Really?

TN: It was just a radio jingle. They did a series of ads where they had different people do the Busch jingle but do their own thing to it. It was like Ramsey Lewis, Muddy Waters, us, a couple of other people. I can’t remember who else, and I’d get a check the beginning of January, and it pretty much paid the bills for the year.

BW: Do you remember the jingle?

TN: It was just, “Head for Busch beer.” It was their theme song, but we put our own spin on it, and it was just on radio, but it paid really good. So, anyway, when I first started recording for Rounder, they said, “Well, we want you to do just traditional blues,” and I did my best to give them that, but it didn’t come out that way, and they were very disappointed.

BW: I went to college with Bill Nowlin and Ken Irwin who went on to found Rounder.

TN: Oh, yeah?

BW: They were the ones that got me into the game.

TN: Well, they did an amazing thing with that label, but I didn’t enjoy working with them very much, because they wanted what they wanted, and I didn’t want that.

BW: You say somewhere in one interview that I read that every label you’d been on expected you to be the next Janis.

TN: Yeah, yeah, true, or the next whatever the flavor was then, but for the most part it was Janis. They expected that because I did blues, and I have a big, loud voice.

BW: Yeah.

TN: So they just figured that’s what they could get, and I never made any promise I couldn’t keep. I never agreed to any of it, and in many cases I just said, “If you’re expecting the next Janis, you’re not going to get it,” but they just couldn’t get disabused of that, and I guess I should be grateful that people kept giving me chances. I just at the time found it supremely annoying.

BW: So how do you feel now? Here we are. It’s 2011. You’re on Delta Groove.

TN: Yeah, it’s okay.

BW: Where’s your head on that right now? This album is as close to a Chicago blues album as anything you’ve done, right?

TN: Yeah, so everything I’m doing from this point on is stuff I’ve always wanted to do and haven’t gotten around to yet.

BW: Nice.

TN: These songs are songs I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and how many records have I done? Do you have any idea?

BW: Twenty-six.

TN: Yeah, I think we say that in the liner notes or the promo somewhere. I’ve done enough kind of genre practically. So now I’m just doing stuff I wanna make sure I get done before I get hit by a train. So that’s what this record was, and they’re probably going to want a – if they want another record from me, given that the label will be around next year, but Delta Groove seems to be hanging in there pretty good. They’re probably gonna want another blues record, and I probably have another blues record in me.

You know, songs that maybe aren’t as stylized in Chicago, but I still have a bag of tunes I’d really like to do, and there’s a bunch of kinds of things I’d like to try, one of which even though everyone and his dog has done it, I would like to do a record of jazz standards, and I’ve been collecting tunes forever. So, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to do everything I want to do.

BW: I started to ask you earlier, which of the songs on this album were in your comfort zone? We talked about a couple that weren’t.

TN: Uh, quite frankly, I’m gonna have to look at the record and see what’s on the record. Uh – “You Be Mine” I felt comfortable with even though I was a little worried about doing it. I had done “Howlin’ for My Baby” for a while. We did it with The Chicago Blues Reunion. Sam [Lay] and I did it together. I don’t think there’s anything really besides “The Love You Save” that I wasn’t totally comfortable with by he time I finished it. It took a long time to get this record done. We cut the tracks, and we didn’t finish the vocals until almost a year later.

BW: Really, why?

TN: Because I had to walk away from it for some reason, and I’m not sure even now why, I just couldn’t get my teeth into it. I just walked away from it for a while and came back to it later, and then I was, oh, I just had psyched myself into something weird I think. I was doing it myself, so there was no pressure on me to get it done, and I’m glad I did that because I got much better vocals when I did that, especially “Stranger in My Own Home Town.” I still really enjoyed doing it. I love doing Percy Mayfield. And that’s a song a lot of people have done, a lot of people.

BW: I’m trying to remember other people’s versions of it, but when I wrote my notes on that I said that the organ was so perky, and the percussion was so upbeat. That was a particular song that I felt was so different that you guys really took a different tack on that.

TN: Yeah, yeah. What was the one Pugh did the almost Farfisa sound on? I can’t remember. Once I finish, I don’t listen to it again.

BW: “I Know It’s A Sin.”

TN: Pugh did a different kind of a thing on almost every song.

BW: He did.

TN: And that’s his genius.

“So now I’m just doing stuff I wanna make sure

I get done before I get hit by a train.”

BW: When the fireman said to you which room did you want saved, did you have to think twice about it?

TN: I did. Mike didn’t. It was actually Mike that got that wrong in the story line, but it was Mike that said the studio. First of all, this was his grandfather’s house. His father was born in this house. So he had a lot more emotional attachment to it than I do, and the living room – I lost almost everything of sentimental value that I have ’cause it was all in the living room, and that’s where the fire started, and that’s what totally torched.

So by then, that wasn’t an issue. They couldn’t save the living room. Then they were talking at a point we’re just gonna have to let this burn [and we’re gonna get this out] ’cause it was an old house, they couldn’t get through the walls to get at the fire ’cause it was old oak, but God bless ’em. They did get it out. So we did not lose the whole house, but everything – all the tapes, and it wasn’t just that my record was in there, but that was important to both of them, but their tapes and records. That’s where all of Mike’s favorite stuff was.

So, yeah, I didn’t have to think very long, and Mike didn’t have to think for a second. And they did, they busted out the front window, went in, got the computer, pulled that out first. I just took a box of records over to the fire hall the other day. [Sniff…silence]

BW: Are you okay?

TN: I’m pacing, why?

BW: You got silent on me for a second there.

TN: No.

BW: Okay. Are you in the house right now?

TN: No, I’m in the house we’re staying in. It’s right across the street from our old house.

BW: I see. So it’s not livable.

TN: No, no, and we still – we’re kind of tearing in to do some demo. We can salvage the house. The structure is firm, but we’re just looking at – we’ve got eight acres, and there are nicer building spots. Mike wants to restore the house. I’d rather built on a prettier place on the property ’cause of course, like all old farm houses, it’s right on the road.

BW: Right.

TN: Yeah, so we’re kind of at the point of seeing where we are with the house. Then we have to find out what it’s gonna cost to restore the house versus build a new one, and then what we can get, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, we’re just [figuring] what we’re planning to do.

BW: Is the picture on the cover of the new CD taken from inside the house?

TN: No, no. That’s my old cabin that I sold to my neighbors a few years ago, and he was in the process of tearing out the inside. He exposed the logs, and we went out there one day. I was still moving stuff out of the house, and Mike said, “God, this would make a great album shot.” He had tore off this log, and there had been sheetrock on the inside. He had torn out the sheetrock, but then there was all this old wallpaper behind it, an old piano which the mice had gotten into real bad, and it didn’t even really belong to me. So that was just left there, and it was such an evocative shot. I lost my piano in the fire, but it was a baby grand. A lot of people are gonna think that, and that’s fine.

BW: How about the picture of Ma Rainey?

TN: Well, that I have to admit was Photo Shopped. We had one shot that I didn’t want to use and everybody else wanted to use, and they said, “Well, we gotta have something.” And Mindy, my manager, who is a brilliant kind of graphics person, too, Mindy Giles.

She said, “How about if we get a good picture of Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey and just put it on the wall, and we can just take that detail. We don’t have to shoot, another picture.” So she went to the Ma Rainey estate, and they just gave us that picture to use.

BW: What was the picture everybody else wanted that you didn’t?

TN: It was a picture of me, and it was a picture that Mike had taken at the house, and I just looked like crap. It was an interesting picture from an artistic point of view. But I just looked like s***, and I went with it for the longest time because I didn’t want to come across as vain, and then I finally said, “Look, this is gonna be on here forever. I do not want to have this on – and have to deal with for the rest of my life.”

BW: [Sigh]

TN: Ah, well, and I hate having my picture taken. The thought of having to go and do another photo shoot was just beyond me, too. I hate it more than anything on this earth. I’d rather do vacuuming than…

BW: Damn! Vacuuming!

TN: And I don’t vacuum. That’s Mike’s job. I don’t do it. I do everything else. I just don’t vacuum.

BW: To sum up, is this album of the twenty-six in any way special to you?

TN: Well, sort of, because of the whole drama of it.

BW: Because of the fire!

TN: Yeah.

BW: It was all recorded before the fire, though, right?

TN: Yeah, but it could have ceased to exist. Really, after the fact Mike said, “We had already burned some disks of mixes,” and we could have mastered from that. It would have been unfortunate because then you never could go back to the tracks. So, for that reason, it is, but every record I do I work so hard on I to make it what I need it to be, and this is one of two records I recorded on my own.

In other words, I didn’t have a label behind me hurrying me up, cutting the budget. I spent a lot of money on this record, and I got everything exactly the way I wanted it. So, that and the record I did several years ago, Ebony and Irony, are probably the most special because I’m completely satisfied with both records. Any other record the funds got cut off, or the timing, you know? Pressure was there.

BW: I’m interviewing Jorma Kaukonen in an hour. Anything you’d like me to say to him?

TN: You know, let me tell you a quick story about Jorma. I think I only met him once in my life. One of my big regrets is that there are three people I’ve never met that I wanted to. One is Dolly Parton, one is Loretta Lynn, and the other is Grace Slick. I’ve always just totally admired Grace Slick, she’s a brilliant woman, a brilliant musician. The Great Society, the band she had with her then husband was great, it was one of my favorite acts of San Francisco. So I really regret that I’ve never met her, but when the first record came out, the first girl singer, Signe Anderson, I was working in a record store in Berkeley, and they were doing an in-store, so they came in, and Signe Anderson wasn’t there, and so at a point where people were coming in with records, they looked at me, and they just kinda thought I was her when I was behind the cash register ringing up sales.

BW: Yes.

TN: Jorma had me signing records.

BW: [Laugh]

TN: And I felt so dumb about it that sometimes I put down like Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith. People will look carefully at those records, somebody has an Airplane record signed by Ma Rainey.

Don Wilcock is editor in chief of BluesWax. He would enjoy reading your comments below.