IN THE MIX Nicolette Larson Edition Vol. 2 - Rhumba Girl
While accounts vary, Nicolette Larson claims she picked up a cassette off the floor of Neil Young’s truck, stuck it in the cassette player, and Lotta Love came on. She told Jimmy McDonough in the Young biography Shakey, “I said, ‘Neil, that’s a really good song.’ He said, ‘You want it? It’s yours.’”
The song was included on her 1978 debut which luckily landed on shelves the same day as Young’s Comes A Time—which her vocals were all over. It also contained Young’s version of Lotta Love.
Young told Rolling Stone, “She told me, ‘I’m the best one. I can follow you anywhere you want to go. No one can follow you better than I can.’ And she could.” Nowhere is this more evident than in the duo’s version of Ian & Sylvia’s Four Strong Winds, which became a favorite of mine putting together this tribute.
Larson’s debut included Little Feat’s keyboardist Bill Payne and guitarist Paul Barrere, as well as The Doobie Brothers’ Michael McDonald. Her good friends Linda Ronstadt and Valerie Carter were happy to supply backing vocals.
Producer Ted Templeman was struggling to find an arrangement for Nicolette’s version of Lotta Love, and the sessions were almost finished. He got the answer when he happened to hear Ace’s How Long on the radio. He told Rolling Stone, “I stole that whole chord change, to put an intro.”
It really is the perfect pairing of singer and song, and Larson was suddenly in demand on TV shows from The Midnight Special to Evening At The Improv.
Larson performed at The Roxy in Los Angeles in 1978. Her label recorded the show, and released it as a promo only item. Listening to it now, I’m amazed that it didn’t see an official release, and feel it might have changed her fortunes if it had. There are two tracks from it on Volume 2, as well as her aforementioned appearance on Evening At The Improv.
Her subsequent Warner Bros. releases didn’t sell like her first and, like Ronstadt, Larson appeared in musicals for couple of years, most notably Jesus Christ Superstar, with David Cassidy.
Larson had always avoided doctors, but she wasn’t feeling well, and finally overcame her fears. Within a week of going to the doctor, she had passed. The complications of liver damage, & a serious ulcer lead to Nicolette having a seizure, and slipping into a coma. She was only 45 years old.
On IN THE MIX Nicolette Larson Edition Vol. 2 there are tracks featuring Valerie Carter, Lauren Wood, & Larson, and of course Neil Young and Larson. There’s a duet with Steve Goodman, and she joins in on the darkest song ever recorded by (her former boyfriend) Weird Al Yankovic; Good Old Days.
Nicolette backed Jimmy Buffett to great effect on his cover of James Taylor’s Mexico. She also helped out Linda Ronstadt on her cover of I Can’t Let Go, & Rita Coolidge’s cover of One More Heartache. That’s also her on The Doobie Brothers’ Minute By Minute.
Several of her own releases are here, You Send Me, Back In My Arms Again, & the follow-up single to Lotta Love—Rhumba Girl—which was a hit in Canada.
If you can stand a little more name dropping there are also tracks by Billy Joe Shaver, Jesse Winchester, & Hoyt Axton.
I got most of this information from an excellent NICOLETTE LARSON article in Rolling Stone Magazine by ANGIE MATOCCIO (courtesy of Mike Larson). No link supplied because of their paywall.
