Nicolette Larson
Nicolette Larson (July 17, 1952 – December 16, 1997) was an American singer. She is perhaps best known for her work in the late 1970s with Neil Young and her 1978 hit single of Young's "Lotta Love", which hit No. 1 on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart[1] and No. 8 on the pop singles chart.[2] It was followed by four more adult contemporary hits, two of which were also minor pop hits.
Nicolette Larson
July 17, 1952
Helena, Montana, U.S.
December 16, 1997 (aged 45)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
1973–1997
By 1985, she shifted her focus to country music, charting six times on the US country singles chart.[3] Her only top-40 country hit was "That's How You Know When Love's Right", a duet with Steve Wariner. She died in 1997 of cerebral edema and liver failure.
Early life and career[edit]
Nicolette Larson was born in Helena, Montana.[4][5] Her father's employment with the U.S. Treasury Department necessitated frequent relocation for the family. She graduated from high school in Kansas City, Missouri, where she attended the University of Missouri for three semesters and worked at waitressing and office jobs before beginning to pursue the musical career she had dreamed of since singing along to the radio as a child.
Larson eventually settled in San Francisco, California, where she worked in a record store and for the Golden Gate Country Bluegrass Festival. She first performed as the opening for Eric Andersen at The Egress, a club in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1975, Larson auditioned for Hoyt Axton, who was producing Commander Cody. This led to Larson's gig with Hoyt Axton and The Banana Band, who were opening for Joan Baez on the 1975 "Diamonds and Rust" tour. She gained her first recording credit on Commander Cody's 1975 album, Tales From the Ozone, and also provided background vocals for Commander Cody albums in 1977 and 1978. Other early career singing credits were for 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 and Guthrie Thomas both worked with Hoyt Axton and recorded their first professional recording session together on Axton's Southbound album for A&M Records. As newcomers to the recording industry, they were listed on the back cover of the album as "Street Singers", entirely separate from the highly paid, well-respected artists who also appeared on the album.[6]
Larson's work with Emmylou Harris – the album Luxury Liner (1977) prominently showcased Larson on the song "Hello Stranger" – led to her meeting Harris's associate and friend Linda Ronstadt, who became friends with Larson. In 1977, Larson was at Ronstadt's Malibu home when neighbor Neil Young phoned to ask Ronstadt if she could recommend a female vocal accompanist. Ronstadt suggested Larson; she was the third person that day to mention Larson 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."[7]
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 his Comes a Time album. This led to Larson's being signed to Warner Brothers, an affiliate of Young's home label Reprise.
Larson continued her background 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. She also sang on the Doobie Brothers' Minute by Minute. That album's producer, Ted Templeman, then produced Larson's debut album, Nicolette.[8]
1983–1997[edit]
Larson's appearance in a touring production of the C&W musical Pump Boys and Dinettes garnered enough positive reaction for MCA Nashville to sign her in 1983. The Nashville music community was so enthused about Larson's C&W cross-over that in 1984 the Academy of Country Music named her the Best New Female Vocalist before she had any MCA Nashville releases. Larson's MCA debut ...Say When was not released until 1985 (by which point country pop was no longer in style and neotraditionalists had taken over the country scene). The C&W career it ushered in for Larson proved anticlimactic with only one of her six MCA single releases becoming a significant hit: her duet with Steve Wariner titled "That's How You Know When Love's Right," taken from the April 1986 album release Rose of My Heart. The record reached No. 9 C&W. Larson's MCA albums, produced by Emory Gordy Jr. and Tony Brown, attracted little critical attention. Her final mainstream album release was Shadows of Love, a 1988 recording made for the Italian CGD label and produced by Carlo Stretti and Ernesto Taberelli. It was her only album for a non-US label. In 1990 Larson participated in the Festival di Sanremo, duetting with Grazia Di Michele on the song "Me and My Father".
In 1992 Larson reunited professionally with Neil Young to sing on his Harvest Moon album. In 1993 she was featured on Young's Unplugged. She also provided vocal accompaniment on "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Greensleeves", two of the tracks Young contributed to Seven Gates: A Christmas Album by Ben Keith and Friends (1994). Larson's final album was the self-produced Sleep, Baby, Sleep, consisting of music for children, released on Sony Wonder in 1994.
Larson also contributed to the seasonal albums Tennessee Christmas (1987) with "One Bright Star", Acoustic Christmas (1988) with "Christmas Is a Time for Giving," and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (1989) with "Nothing But a Child" and "One Bright Star". In 1988, Larson contributed to the soundtracks of the films They Call Me Renegade and Twins with the tracks "Let Me Be the One" and "I'd Die for This Dance", respectively; the latter was performed live onscreen by Larson, accompanied by Jeff Beck.
While it was recorded in 1978, Live at the Roxy was given its first full release in 2006, nine years after Larson's death. It was released by Rhino.[11] Also in 2006, Rhino Entertainment released the album A Tribute to Nicolette Larson: Lotta Love Concert. Two "Lotta Love" concerts were held on February 20 and 21, 1998, in Santa Monica, CA, to benefit the UCLA Children's Hospital. [1]
Personal life[edit]
Through her early work in the 1970s with Emmylou Harris, Larson met guitarist and songwriter Hank DeVito. Larson and DeVito later married and divorced. She also dated Neil Young during the Comes a Time sessions. In the early 1980s, Larson was engaged to Andrew Gold, but their relationship ended shortly after the completion of Larson's 1982 album All Dressed Up and No Place to Go, which Gold had produced. In the late 1980s, she briefly dated "Weird Al" Yankovic.[12] Yankovic would later compose “You Don’t Love Me Anymore”, a style parody of Larson’s work, for his 1992 album Off the Deep End. In 1990, Larson married drummer Russ Kunkel, and the two remained married until her death in 1997. The couple's daughter, Elsie May Larson-Kunkel, was born in 1990.[13]
Death[edit]
Larson died on December 16, 1997, in Los Angeles, California, as a result of complications arising from cerebral edema triggered by liver failure.[14] She was 45 years old. According to her friend Astrid Young, Neil Young's half-sister, Larson had been showing symptoms of depression, and her fatal seizure "was in no small way related to her chronic use of Valium and Tylenol PM."[15] Two benefit concerts were held in Larson's honor in February 1998. Tribute concerts were held on the 10th anniversary of her death in December 2007 and also the following year.