Tracy Nelson - You'll Never Be a Stranger at My Door (2007)

Nearly four decades after recording her influential classic Tracy Nelson Country, the former lead singer of Mother Earth--and a legend of white urban blues--returns to the country idiom with a collection of her favorite songs. In a stunning turn, she kicks off the album with an inventive rendition of the western-jazz classic "Cow Cow Boogie," inspired not by the Tennessee Ernie Ford version, but Ella Fitzgerald's 1944 hit with the Ink Spots. (Here, Terry Tucker, Nelson's hair cutter, provides the charismatic black male vocal.) If nothing else that follows this charming performance is quite as grabby, Nelson instead offers up a ton of integrity in her emotionally resonant takes on Johnny Cash's "I Still Miss Someone," Jim Reeves's "Four Walls," the Everly Brothers' "I Wonder If I Care as Much," Don Gibson's "Oh, Lonesome Me" (framed as a Cajun caper), and Randy Sharp's elegant breakup song "New Way Out," with its exquisitely pained chorus. Nelson restrains her powerhouse alto--an instrument as authoritative as it is expansive--to take the focus off herself and emphasize melody and lyric. Her natural R&B leanings come to the fore on a reworking of Ernest Tubb's "Thanks a Lot" (shades of Brenda Lee), as well as on the warm and comforting "Stranger at My Door," a staple of her live repertoire for years. But the Wisconsin native best proves her understanding of the country genre on "Salt of the Earth," a song she co-wrote with Alice Newman Vestal and Guy Clark, who also contributes an affecting, if creaky, recitation. In recounting the plights of her Dickson, Tennessee, neighbors, all of whom lived by their "strong mind/simple creed," she forges a rock-solid connection to country's core--front-porch story songs about family and friends, life and death. Like all the music that pours out of her, Nelson's paean comes from the soul. --Alanna Nash