Marcia Ball/Tracy Nelson/Irma Thomas [extended]

• Make a Joyful Noise [Mercury, 1969] A
• Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country [Mercury, 1970] A
• Satisfied [Mercury, 1970] A-
• Bring Me Home [Reprise, 1971] B+
• Tracy Nelson/Mother Earth [Reprise, 1972] B
• Poor Man's Paradise [Columbia, 1973] C+
• Tracy Nelson [Atlantic, 1974] C-
• Safe With Me [RCS, 1979] B+
• Soulful Dress [Rounder, 1984] B+
• Dreams Come True [Antone's, 1990] A-
• Time Is on My Side--The Best of Irma Thomas Volume 1 [EMI, 1993] ***
• Sweet Soul Queen of New Orleans: The Irma Thomas Collection [Razor & Tie, 1997] A-
• Let Me Play With Your Poodle [Rounder, 1997]
• Sing It! [Rounder, 1998]
• After the Rain [Rounder, 2006]

See Also:

• Marcia Ball
• Marcia Ball/Lou Ann Barton/Angela Strehli
• Tracy Nelson
• Tracy Nelson/Mother Earth
• Mother Earth
• Irma Thomas

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Mother Earth: Make a Joyful Noise [Mercury, 1969]
Another excellent album from this underrated group. The "city" side is like much of "Living with the Animals" and the "country" side is almost what it says, including two superb songs by R. P. St. John. It is even better, on the whole, than . . . [Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country] A

Tracy Nelson: Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country [Mercury, 1970]
Country specialists don't approve of this--seem to feel it's cheating to step lively with such undeniable material. But only an inspired cheat would feature songs by Crudup, Willis, Scaggs, and T. Nelson on her country album. And only a paragon would sing them so sweet, direct, and strong. Nor would the mix of musicians--led by original Elvis guitarist Scotty Moore--occur to your everyday Nashvillian. Country, rock, who cares--eleven beautiful songs beautifully rendered. A

Mother Earth: Satisfied [Mercury, 1970]
Tracy Nelson doesn't touch everyone, but once she does, she carries you away. She can be sexual and spiritual not successively but on the same note and breath; she seems to suffer and to transcend suffering simultaneously. Vocally, Mother Earth is now Tracy Nelson, and although in theory I miss the male voices--especially Robert St. John's, whose songwriting always added something too--I'm not really complaining. Yet this record is a slight disappointment. I love it, but I know that my prejudices are strong and that only once--on her own composition, "Andy's Song"--does Tracy burst calmly into free space as she does so often on the two previous Mother Earth lps and on Tracy Nelson Country. Recommended unequivocally to her cadre and equivocally to the benighted. A-

Mother Earth: Bring Me Home [Reprise, 1971]
On the face of it this is a slight improvement, introducing three major songs--the Eric Kaz side-openers and Steve Young's "Seven Bridges Road." And if the powerful, arresting arrangement of Kaz's "Temptation Took Control of Me and I Fell" isn't as far out as what the original band used to try in San Francisco, it's certainly played with more assurance. Still, when you've boiled it down to backing up a singer and the songs, both had better be special all the time. And they ain't. B+

Tracy Nelson/Mother Earth: Tracy Nelson/Mother Earth [Reprise, 1972]
Living with the animals is turning this band bovine. The big development--not counting the new billing--is a goodly helping of gospel piano, which like everything else is quite pleasant without counteracting the inevitable drags. Praise the Lord for one thing: they do admit to the "Tennessee Blues." B

Tracy Nelson/Mother Earth: Poor Man's Paradise [Columbia, 1973]
Jack Lee's three songs include one about how California was too hectic for him, and the only tune better than that comes from Willie Dixon, a specialist in the blues music a band of more or less the same name once played. C+

Tracy Nelson: Tracy Nelson [Atlantic, 1974]
Even at her peak, Nelson risked sluggishness: you wondered whether that was placidity or metabolic malfunction. Now her voice has thickened, its seriousness become leaden. It takes her a minute longer to finish "Down So Low" than it did six years ago. Literally tedious: "tiresome because of slowness, continuance, or prolixity." C-

Irma Thomas: Safe With Me [RCS, 1979]
I assume they reprised the title song because they thought it was a sure shot, but they miscalculated, which is too bad--this album could use a sure shot. Thomas is deep, the material intelligent, and the mix of soul and disco disarmingly offhand. I like every cut except the gris-gris-for-tourists "Princess La-La." But I don't love a one of 'em. B+

Marcia Ball: Soulful Dress [Rounder, 1984]
Most of the new rash of soul folk, survivors and revivalists both, do little or nothing to redefine the values they hold dear, but this reformed country singer avoids any hint of neocon nostalgia. With her rolling bayou backbeat, her standards you never heard before, her habit of belting the man she's loyal to, and the moleskin burr that textures her every line, she has the makings of a downhome Bonnie Raitt. Just in time. B+

Marcia Ball/Lou Ann Barton/Angela Strehli: Dreams Come True [Antone's, 1990]
Wrapping her warm, slinky voice around lyrics borrowed and dreamed up, Marcia Ball earns top billing in this ad hoc Austin blues trio. Lou Ann Barton, a professional tramp who's done her share of rehab, and Angela Strehli, a sensible sort who runs the label, must have figured it would be neighborly to help their old pal turn in a decent followup to Soulful Dress, which is eight years old now. Sure they did--they love each other like Ike and Tina, whose "A Fool in Love" they covered to initiate this mission impossible in 1985. Congratulations to coordinator-bassist Sarah Brown for getting a record out of them, and to producer-pianist Dr. John for easing it up toward the sum of its parts. A-

Irma Thomas: Time Is on My Side--The Best of Irma Thomas Volume 1 [EMI, 1993]
betta than Etta? ("Two Winters Long," "Some Things You Never Get Used To") ***

Irma Thomas: Sweet Soul Queen of New Orleans: The Irma Thomas Collection [Razor & Tie, 1997]
Born in 1941, Thomas had four kids and two husbands behind her by the time of her brief pop run in 1964, but you'd never have known how hard her life had been. She was too busy trying to sing the songs right, and that didn't mean interpreting them, much less infusing them with her own experience--it meant nailing a commercial sound. Blessed with a surpassingly warm voice even for New Orleans, she took more naturally to the cockeyed optimism Allen Toussaint can't repress than to the darker moods of the early soul songs she tried. But just to be on the safe side she put happy and sad into everything, as on Toussaint's oh so hummable "Take a Look"--which comes out far more serious and sincere, and hence effective, than the wedding-day bliss of its lyric requires. It's her tractability before strong material--better chosen here than on EMI's already deleted 1992 best-of ("Volume 1," ha)--that makes her so winsome. And it was her determination to please that eventually turned her into a blatantly ordinary local institution. Believe me--she was more interesting when she didn't know what she was doing. A-

Marcia Ball: Let Me Play With Your Poodle [Rounder, 1997]
"Let Me Play with Your Poodle"

Sing It! [Rounder, 1998]

Irma Thomas: After the Rain [Rounder, 2006]