Early Life and Career
Nicolette Larson was born in Helena, Montana. Her father's employment with the U.S. Treasury Department necessitated frequent relocation for Larson's family. She graduated from high school in Kansas City, Missouri where Larson attended the University of Missouri for three semesters and also worked at waitressing and office jobs before giving in to the pursuit of a musical career she'd dreamed of since singing along to the radio as a child. Larson eventually settled in San Francisco where she worked in a record store; her volunteer work as support staff for the Golden Gate Country Bluegrass Festival brought encouragement for her vocal ambitions and she began performing in Bay Area showcases, eventually making her professional debut opening for Eric Andersen at a club in Vancouver BC. In 1975 Larson auditioned for Hoyt Axton who was producing Commander Cody with the result that Larson also performed with "Hoyt Axton and The Bananna Band" during their gig opening for Joan Baez on the 1975 "Diamonds and Rust" tour and accrued her first recording credit on the 1975 Commander Cody album Tales From the Ozone: Larson would also provide background vocals for Commander Cody albums in 1977 and 1978. Other early session singing credits for Larson were for Hoyt Axton and Guy Clark in 1976 and in 1977 for Mary Kay Place, Rodney Crowell, Billy Joe Shaver, Jesse Colin Young, Jesse Winchester and Gary Stewart.
Larson's work with Emmylou Harris — the album Luxury Liner (1977) prominently showcased Larson on the cut "Hello Stranger" — led to her meeting Harris' associate and friend Linda Ronstadt who became friends with Larson. In the spring of 1977 Larson was at Ronstadt's Malibu home when neighbor Neil Young phoned to ask Ronstadt if she could recommend a female vocal accompanist, and Ronstadt suggested Larson, becoming the third person that day to put Larson's name forward to Young. Young came over to meet Larson who recalled: "Neil ran down all the songs he had just written, about twenty of them. We sang harmonies with him and he was jazzed."
The following week Ronstadt and Larson cut their vocals for Young's American Stars 'n Bars album at Young's La Honda ranch — the two women were billed on the album as the Bullets — and in November 1977 Young invited Larson to Nashville to sing on the sessions for his Comes a Time album, an assignment which led to Larson's being signed to Warner Brothers, an affiliate of Young's home label Reprise. Larson continued her session singing career into 1978 accruing credit on recordings by Marcia Ball, Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris' (Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town) and Norton Buffalo. Larson also contributed vocals to the Doobie Brothers' Minute by Minute whose producer Ted Templeman would be responsible for Larson's debut album Nicolette.
Read more about this topic: Nicolette Larson
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“We shall make mistakes, but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principles. I remember that my old school master Dr. Peabody said in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled, he said things in life will not always run smoothly, sometimes we will be rising toward the heights and all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great thing to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)