"That's Alright Mama"

New collector's item video release!!

In 1969, Tracy Nelson and members of Mother Earth came to Nashville to record some tracks for Mother Earth's "Make A Joyful Noise" LP, the followup to the now classic "Living With the Animals". Once the recording was completed for "Make A Joyful Noise" , most of the band returned to San Francisco, but as they had time remaining on their farmhouse rental in Mt. Juliet, Tracy, a and few others stayed another few months and ended up working on what became " Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country". A bold move for both label and artist in retrospect, perhaps, as no 'rock' artist had yet done anything like it. Fortunately, there was a camera crew there to capture the magic that occured when the 'hippies' from the West Coast meet the top Nashville 'pickers' of the day.

Tracy elaborates, "The movie, 'That's Alright Mama", is a documentary of the making of the "ME Presents Tracy Nelson Country" album. I had met and used Pete Drake (premier session steel player of the time) and (Johnny) Gimble on the Make A Joyful Noise record and met Scotty (Moore - former Elvis guitarist) thru them when I went to a session they were doing at Scotty's studio. Pete talked me into trying a country record which Mercury agreed to and we were off and running. It was my first experience with the Nashville recording scene and a bit of a cross cultural event. Along with Pete and Johnny we had Jack Drake on bass, Ben Keith on dobro, the fabulous Jordinaires singing backup and of course Scotty on "That's Alright Mama". We had to twist his arm a little to get him to play. At the time he had put the guitar aside and was mostly engineering and running his studio. We mixed several of the ME members into the section which added still more cross-culturalness.

Danny Seymour who produced and shot the documentary was an old friend from Minnesota whom I was involved with for a time. He was primarily a photographer but was also interested in, and beginning to make, films when we decided to make the country record. He asked if he could hang around and film it and we readily said yes. He brought his friend Robert Frank along as assistant cameraman which was ironic given the fact that he was and is a well known and respected photographer and documentary filmmaker himself.

"That's Alright, Mama" survives as an invaluable home movie for Scotty Moore, Johnny Gimble and me since a great many of the musicians in the film have passed: Pete and Jack Drake, several of the Jordinaires, Shorty Lavender. They were the cream of Nashville session players and I consider myself blessed to have worked with them at all, much less having it on film. We all had great fun on the sessions and I hope some of that came through in the documentary. I plan on devoting some time at the site to answering questions about, and discussing images from, the film, if it seems appropriate."

Notes on the film: "That's Alright, Mama" was originally shot on 16mm color film, in existing light (which means low-light in most instances), and with a camera-mounted microphone. The movie was shown at a few art house theatres in 1970 in S.F. and New York. It has not been seen by the public since. The only known remaining print (#3) of the movie was, thankfully, in the posession of Andy Baum, part of the original production team on the film (Director Danny Seymour died in the late 70's.) . Andy had a Beta master of the film made in 1996, and we then created a digital video master from that, preserving quality to the highest possible level.

*** All VHS videos sold are real-time dubs from the digital master! ***

See clips from "That's Alright, Mama" in the Gallery!!

BUY IT NOW at the new TracyNelson.com Store!!

You can still buy Tracy's 20th album release "Ebony & Irony " HERE!!!