Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie Raitt is the self-titled debut album by Bonnie Raitt, released in 1971. A straight-blues affair, it was recorded at an empty summer camp on Enchanted Island, about 30 miles west of Minneapolis on Lake Minnetonka. "We recorded live on four tracks because we wanted a more spontaneous and natural feeling in the music," Raitt wrote in the album's liner notes, "a feeling often sacrificed when the musicians know they can overdub their part on a separate track until it's perfect." Though album sales were modest, Bonnie Raitt was warmly received by rock critics. "Raitt is a folkie by history but not by aesthetic," wrote Robert Christgau in his Consumer Guide column. "She includes songs from Steve Stills, the Marvelettes, and a classic feminist blues singer named Sippie Wallace because she knows the world doesn't end with acoustic song-poems and Fred McDowell. An adult repertoire that rocks with a steady roll, and she's all of twenty-one years old."