Bonnie Raitt (Born 08/11/1949)

A Primer entry prompted by an old addition to the (now defunct) Desert Island (a Bonnie Raitt special no less), it's a biography that on reflection should have found a place in the Primer a very long time ago.
Revisiting all the Bonnie CDs, especially the 70s material, you realise just what a very fine blues slide and bottleneck guitarist she is; and consistently over the years, she's always had the innate ability to move the listener with a series of deeply emotional vocal performances. It's hard to describe, but her voice just simply connects. And yet until the 1989 blockbuster "Nick Of Time", she had little or no real commercial success and remained largely a critical favourite with a very solid, core fan base. 

She is the daughter of Broadway star John Raitt and singer/pianist Marge Goddard. Brought up in the Quaker traditions and with a respect for the arts, she was exposed to a social activism that has stayed with her for the whole of her life. After receiving a guitar as a Christmas present as a child, she established an early affinity for the blues but, although passionate about music, as she developed her expertise she saw it simply as one of many hobbies and did not initially see it as a potential career.

Whilst studying at Harvard / Radcliffe she played the coffeehouses to generate a little extra income, landed a major label deal (Warner Brothers) and took a year off to record her first album, "Bonnie Raitt" - she never went back to college. The first album included blues classics alongside more contemporary material from the likes of Stephen Stills and Paul Siebel. Warner Brothers gave her complete control over the album, something which she has argued she has managed to maintain throughout her career. The album showcased a precocious talent, but the follow-up "Give It Up" was even better. Featuring material from emerging singer-songwriters such as Jackson Browne and Eric Kaz, along with R&B covers and Raitt originals, it was an impressively eclectic album and still one of the best she's recorded. She followed it with a series of albums through the 70s, including the superb John Hall produced "Takin' My Time" (where she paid tribute to friend, Mississippi Fred McDowell, with whom, along with the likes of Sippie Wallace and Howlin' Wolf, she had played in the coffeehouses and beyond), "Streetlights, "Home Plate", "Sweet Forgiveness" and "The Glow".
They are all worthy of your time and money, although the later albums employed more commercial production values and there were the occasional forays into more orthodox pop covers (Del Shannon's 'Runaway' from "Sweet Forgiveness" for example).

The 80s were less kind to Bonnie, although she did pick up three Grammy nominations during the period. She continued to work tirelessly on behalf of the Rhythm and Blues Music Foundation, played hundreds of benefits concerts and was part of the artists anti-nuclear 'No Nukes' movement. 1982's "Green Light" got the usual good reviews but, subsequent to its failure to generate any commercial pay-off, Warner Brothers dropped her from the label. By now, Raitt was also battling drug and alcohol addictions. Throughout this period however, she continued to gig and, because she had such a solid fan base, she never lost her ability to headline shows. Even so "Nine Lives" (1986), despite it being a fine release, was her poorest selling album since her debut.

Signing with Capitol Records and forging an alliance with producer Don Was, Bonnie released her breakthrough (after 10 albums!!) release "Nick Of Time" - winning best album at the 1990 Grammy Awards. Still featuring the trademark slide and bottleneck, it's a very fine album, but then so were her previous nine albums - maybe the timing was just right.
"Luck Of The Draw" (featuring Bonnie's stunning performance of 'I Can't Make You Love Me'), "Longing In Their Hearts" and the excellent live album "Roadtested" all followed. On the latter she got to play with some of her blues heroes (Ruth Brown and Charles Brown, for example) and she continued to promote and guest on other blues greats albums, including John Lee Hooker's "The Healer"

1998 saw the release of the exploratory "Fundamental", produced with Mitchell Froom. An attempt to "shake things up a little bit", it's possibly one of the lesser albums in Bonnie's canon, although many would disagree. It certainly wouldn't be the place to start. "Silver Lining" is the 2002 release, an album Raitt feels is one of her best - featuring her road band, and full of Bonnie's trademark vocals and slide guitar, it's an excellent return to form.

Bonnie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 and has, eventually, become an American music institution. But it wasn't always thus, and it took a very long time for her soulful, unaffected singing and top notch slide and bottleneck guitar playing to find their way into the hearts and minds of the record buying public. If you only know Bonnie from "Nick of Time" onwards, you could do a lot worse than investigate those excellent records on Warner Brothers from the 70s, especially the first three. There is a Best Of ("The Collection") covering the Warner Brothers period but much better to buy the individual albums.
Through it all she has remained committed to the music and the rights of the blues men and women from whom she learned and came to know as friends.
"I'm certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who've ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives...." she says.."I'm especially lucky as so many of them are no longer with us."