About Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Gayl Williams is an American singer-songwriter and a solo guitarist. She recorded her first two albums, Ramblin' on My Mind and Happy Woman Blues , in a traditional country and blues style that received critical praise but little public or radio attention. In 1988, she released her third album, Lucinda Williams, to widespread critical acclaim. Regarded as "an Americana classic", the album also features "Passionate Kisses", a song later recorded by Mary Chapin Carpenter for her 1992 album Come On Come On, which garnered Williams her first Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1994. Known for working slowly, Williams released her fourth album, Sweet Old World, four years later in 1992. Sweet Old World was met with further critical acclaim and was voted the 11th best album of 1992 in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of prominent music critics. Robert Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it 6th on his own year-end list, later writing that the album as well as Lucinda Williams were "gorgeous, flawless, brilliant".
Williams' commercial breakthrough came in 1998 with Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, an album presenting a broader scope of songs that fused rock, blues, country and Americana into a distinctive style that remained consistent and commercial in sound. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, which includes the singles "Right in Time" and the Grammy nominated "Can't Let Go", became Williams' greatest commercial success to date. The album was certified Gold by the RIAA the following year, and earned her a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, while being universally acclaimed by critics. Williams' next album, Essence, appeared in 2001 to further critical acclaim and commercial success, becoming her first Top 40 album on the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 28. Featuring a more downbeat musical tone, with spare, intimate arrangements, Essence earned Williams three Grammy nominations in 2002: Best Contemporary Folk Album, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the title track, and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for the single "Get Right With God", which she won.
One of the most celebrated singer-songwriters of her generation, Williams has released a string of albums since that have earned her further critical acclaim and commercial success, including World Without Tears , West , Little Honey , Blessed , Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone , The Ghosts of Highway 20 , and Good Souls Better Angels . Among her various accolades, she has won three Grammy Awards from 17 nominations, and has received two Americana Awards from 11 nominations. Williams ranked No. 97 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock & Roll in 1999, and was named "America's best songwriter" by Time magazine in 2002. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked her the 79th greatest songwriter of all time. In 2017, she received the Berklee College of Music Honorary Doctorate of Music Degree, and ranked No. 91 on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Country Artists of All Time. In 2020, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road ranked No. 97 and Lucinda Williams ranked No. 426 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. She was inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame in 2021. That same year, "Passionate Kisses" ranked No. 437 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Williams was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the daughter of poet and literature professor Miller Williams, and amateur pianist Lucille Fern Day. Her parents divorced in the mid-1960s. Williams' father gained custody of her and her younger brother, Robert Miller, and sister, Karyn Elizabeth. Like her father, Williams has spina bifida. Her father worked as a visiting professor in Mexico and different parts of the United States, including Baton Rouge; New Orleans; Jackson, Mississippi; and Utah before settling at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Williams never graduated from high school but was accepted into the University of Arkansas. Williams started writing when she was 6 years old. She showed an affinity for music at an early age, and was playing guitar at 12. Her first live performance was in Mexico City at 17, as part of a duo with her friend, banjo player Clark Jones.
By her early 20s, Williams was playing publicly in Austin and Houston, Texas, concentrating on a blend of folk, rock, and country. She moved to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1978 to record her first album for Folkways Records. Released in 1979, and titled Ramblin' on My Mind, it was a collection of country and blues covers. Smithsonian Folkways provides a description: "The first recordings from an artist with a gift for interpreting original blues from Robert Johnson to Memphis Minnie to the Carter Family. Williams' unmistakable sound is powerfully direct and filled with melancholy and passion." When the album was re-issued in 1991, the title was shortened to Ramblin'.
Williams' second album, Happy Woman Blues, appeared the following year, and consisted of her own material. Trouser Press felt the record was more "rock-oriented" than Williams' debut album, writing that she used timeworn ideas such as "smoke-stained bars, open roads and a heart that never learns" but reimagined them "in a way that is both contemporary and uncynical". One album track, "I Lost It", was re-recorded 18 years later for Williams' fifth album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road . In the 1980s, Williams moved to Los Angeles, California , where, at times backed by a rock band and at others performing in acoustic settings, she developed a following and a critical reputation. While based in Los Angeles, she was briefly married to Long Ryders drummer Greg Sowders, whom she had met in a club.
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