Tracy Nelson – Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country – The Best of Tracy Nelson/Mother Earth

Godmother of Americana? Perhaps the music of Tracy Nelson fits no more comfortably within the categorical confines of such terms than it did when she began recording it more than a quarter-century ago. Even so, these reissues suggest that this undersung heroine was way ahead of her time, both in blurring the distinctions dividing country, blues, folk and rock, and in suffering the commercial fate of those who refuse to settle into one narrow niche. As much as the Burritos provided the musical map for the Uncle Tupelo generation, Nelson traveled the same road as Lucinda Williams, only a couple of decades earlier.

At the time, Nelson didn’t seem all that special, though there was no discounting the special qualities of her voice, its emotive intensity within a wide range of material. In her formative years, her career paralleled that of Janis Joplin: solo acoustic blues performer hones her chops in university town (Madison, Wisconsin in Nelson’s case; Austin, Texas in Joplin’s), before fronting electric rock band of Texas musicians in San Francisco. With both Nelson’s Mother Earth and Joplin’s Big Brother & the Holding Company, the results were rootsier and bluesier than the flower-power psychedelia then in vogue. Though Nelson was capable of greater nuance and subtlety than Joplin, she wasn’t the show-stopping dynamo that Janis was. Her image was the hippie chick, the girl in the communal band, not the star of the show.

Through her solo career of the ’70s, Nelson found herself commercially eclipsed by Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt, lacking the pop polish of the former and the red-hot bluesiness of the latter, though albums by the three were remarkably similar in terms of musical direction and material selection. Image had to be much of the reason why Ronstadt sold in the millions and Nelson in the dozens, since the conviction that Nelson instilled within whatever she sang made Ronstadt sound like an eclectic dilettante.

As an attempt to channel Nelson’s inspiration in a single direction, 1969’s awkwardly titled Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country sounds more like a hippie-meets-Nashville curiosity than an essential touchstone upon re-release. Originally issued the same year as the Burritos’ debut and Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, the album forsakes what had by then become the revolving-door membership of Mother Earth for sessions with Nashville mainstays (fiddler Johnny Gimble, steel guitarist and co-producer Pete Drake) and Elvis stalwarts (guitarist and co-producer Scotty Moore, drummer D.J. Fontana, vocal backing by the Jordanaires).

Some of the material (Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man”) and the arrangements (particularly the vocal sweetening of the Jordanaires) make the project seem kitschy rather than classic, as if Nelson were so concerned about being a good guest that she didn’t put her own stamp too powerfully on the sessions. Still, the album-opening “Sad Situation” shows her capable of some tour de force soulfulness within a country context, while the emulation of Elvis on “That’s All Right” mines the common spirit of country and rock. Bonus covers of Doug Sahm and Allen Toussaint material, as well as original album tracks from Boz Scaggs and Chuck Willis, suggest just how far the territory of Tracy Nelson Country extends beyond the confines of Nashville.

Less country, but more consistently engaging, is the compilation issued with an even longer title: The Best of Tracy Nelson/Mother Earth Featuring Down So Low. The album-opening “Down So Low” remains as chilling in its gospel intensity as when Nelson wrote it almost 30 years ago, while the rest of these 17 cuts rarely flag in terms of musicianship or material. Whether she’s covering Memphis Slim (whose “Mother Earth” named her band) and Little Willie John, or John Hiatt (then unknown) and Eric Kaz, Nelson cuts to the heart of a song by pouring so much of her own heart into it. These days, she’s recording mainly as a blues singer, living outside Nashville, doing her best to find a home for a talent which transcends category.