Like some lucky songwriters, Tracy Nelson, 78, has been paying the bills from Linda Ronstadt's cover of her powerful Mother Earth song, "Down So Low." But it's Tracy's trademark brand of country blues, through and through. (The song was also covered by Etta James, Diamanda Galás, Dee Dee Warwick, Ellen McIlwaine, Maria Muldaur, and Cyndi Lauper.)
Although Mother Earth started in 1966 as part of the San Francisco music scene, the band eventually moved to Nashville, where Tracy's duet with Willie Nelson on the George Jones-Tammy Wynette classic "After The Fire Is Gone" was nominated for a Grammy.
In recent years, she's been performing in vocal groups with other blues mavens like Marcia Ball and Irma Thomas. Her 1998 collaboration with them, called "Sing It," got her a second Grammy nomination.
