Tracy Nelson is such a classic case of massive unrealized potential that one is tempted to liken her to the Colorado River before Boulder Dam. For the better part of a decade, since her folkie days in Madison, she's lounged around the country, creating a string of nearly great but always flawed albums.

This is her fourth album successively on different labels, but Atlantic comes closest to harnessing that big voice, making it a manageable entity. Linda Ronstadt has had the same vocal dilemma but she sticks close to country, which cuts her losses considerably. Nelson is unsure and edges from C&W to soul to gospel.

"Lean On Me," for example, does not fit her comfortably and her delivery suggests that she's aware of it. The same applies to "It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry." When she finds a tailored song, however, you best get out of the way, for Tracy Nelson is capable of knocking you down when she sweeps by in it.

In the album's finest moments, she and Willie Nelson team up for a duet that is the quintessence of country soul. "After the Fire Is Gone" is big and sweaty and ragged but right. She obviously feels easy with the song and surrounds you with it. Just as she does with "Down So Low," which she wrote and which appeared on the first Mother Earth LP. The delivery is not so different now, six years after she first recorded it, except for an ironic laugh in the middle. It's the laugh of experience and its message is: Been here before, probably be here again, don't take it seriously. (RS 173)

CHET FLIPPO