(Nashville is full of good, promising young artists who might well be tomorrow’s big names in country music, Beginning this month, we shall try to bring these people to your attention. You can consider an artist’s inclusion in this section of Country Music as an endorsement of his or her talent, and feel free to recommend your own favorites.)

No woman has ever captured Music Row quite so totally as Linda Hargrove. That may sound excessive, but it’s true. As a singer, writer, session-person and recording engineer, she’s hot.

Linda began singing professionally with rock and roll, R&B and British blues influenced bands in her hometown, Tallahassee, when she was 16. She first came to Nashville with a group which was recording seven of her songs for a first album "Until I moved here", she says, "I didn’t feel I was developing the way that I could."

She had to make adjustments to a new audience to survive on Music Row, where she kicked around for about a year or so on the verge of giving up until Sandy Posey decided to cut one of her songs. At that session, Linda Hargrove met the two men who seem to have given her writing its strongest sense of direction: Billy Sherrill and Pete Drake.

Billy Sherrill encouraged her writing and singing and a month after that session she auditioned for Drake. He signed her on the spot, with the warning, "Nothing will happen overnight. It’ll take a while to get your name around. Just concentrate on your writing, and when the right time comes, we’ll get you a record deal."

And concentrate on her writing she did, but the way she got her name around is a testimonial to her energy and shrewd intelligence. "Pete said that I played a guitar style sort of like George Harrison, so he used me on a Tommy James (and the Shondells) album he was producing," she remembers. "Then I got into strumming more traditional rhythms – less of a loose type thing – more strict, so he started using me on a lot of his (country) sessions. I played on a couple of RCA dates, and then other producers began to hire me."

Consider this a deadpan description when you realize that Linda Hargrove is the first woman guitar player to become a session regular on Music Row, which is a musician’s jungle.

"At first.," she said, "I don’t think people thought I was serious about it. You know how men are – sort-of you’re-alright-for-a-girl. I still get that a little bit. But I made friends with all the pickers."

This third career (singing and writing being careers within themselves) tipped the balance in her favor. In late 1972, Mike Nesmith, the ex-Monkee who was creating a country label in Los Angeles, came to Nashville looking for material and pickers, and found Linda. He took her to LA to play on an album he was producing and introduced her to Elektra Records A&R VP, Russ Miller. Russ listened to her play her songs on an un-amplified electric guitar, and he asked her "What do you want?"

"I told him I wanted to record," she says.

She returned to Nashville and began recording almost immediately, and the first album, "Music is Your Mistress", made up entirely of her tunes, was released last summer. "It wasn’t a hit album," she smiles, "but for a first album by a new artist, I’m pretty well pleased with it."

Certainly, the album is no skeleton in her closet. Its release brought her widespread recognition among other performers. Tanya Tucker, Melba Montgomery, and Johnny Rodriguez have covered her material in the past few months, but her biggest break to date has been her association with "Hank Wilson" – Leon Russell, who recorded two of her songs in January (1974).

All of her talents came into play on Leon’s sessions. Besides her songs, she contributed her skills as a session musician and even as a recording engineer, a fourth career which she learned last year.

"Well, Pete Drake’s had the studio for almost exactly a year now." She told me when I asked her about this new development of her capability. "I just kept my mouth shut and my eyes open. I just kind of grew into it."