Harris, Emmylou

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EMMYLOU HARRIS

Born: Birmingham, Alabama, 2 April 1947

Genre: Folk, Country

Best-selling album since 1990: Wrecking Ball (1995)

Hit songs since 1990: "Long May You Run"

Although Emmylou Harris was a country music hit maker in the 1970s, she strayed from the music's mainstream, evolving into a traditionalist who deliberately blurred the lines between country, folk, and rock. Praised for her angelic soprano voice, Harris is a consummate harmony singer, collaborating with musicians inside and outside country music circles. After the release of Wrecking Ball (1995), her comeback album that won her an entirely new audience of young rock fans, Harris championed the legacy of her mentor and former harmony partner Gram Parsons. Harris became a sort of godmother to a new generation of country rock musicians who campaigned to record with her and who connected with her eclectic vision of country music.

Harris was raised in a military family and spent her teenage years in a suburb of Washington, D.C. After graduating from high school, she pursued a music career in Greensboro, North Carolina, and later moved to New York City, and Nashville, Tennessee, before returning to the D.C. area, where she became active on the city's folk music circuit. She soon met Gram Parsons, a Harvard-educated southerner who taught Harris how to sing country-music harmony. She ended up joining his band and recorded two albums with him, GP (1973) and Grievous Angel (1974), before he died at age twenty-six of an overdose of morphine and tequila. Through his solo work and brief stints influencing bands like the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Rolling Stones, Parsons was a pioneer in the cross-pollination of country and rock.

Harris produced several country hits throughout the 1970s and 1980s, recorded the country opera The Ballad of Sally Rose (1985), and collaborated with the country stars Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt on the album Trio (1987). She was perceived as a risk-taking traditional country artist who recorded and performed with bluegrass musicians, seasoned Nashville session players, old-time country stars, and rock stars like Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Neil Young. Her repertoire included covers of the songs of country pioneers like Buck Owens, the Louvin Brothers, and Patsy Cline as well as the Beatles and the disco queen Donna Summer. Notwithstanding this ecumenical impulse, Harris often reverted to an old-fashioned acoustic style, a penchant that helped to earn her a term as the president of the Country Music Foundation.

By the 1990s mainstream country music had lost its twang and rural character. With new mass-appeal stars like Garth Brooks and Brooks and Dunn, the country music industry embraced pop hooks and the flashy sensation of stadium rock. Harris's old-time sensibilities were suddenly out of fashion, and she publicly lamented the music's high-gloss makeover. "The reason modern country audiences miss out is that they haven't heard the music's true roots outside its boot-kickin', hat-wearin', bronco-ridin' stereotypes," she told a reporter in 1997. "It's crazy. A lot of them think country music started in 1982."

Harris cut her ties with her longtime label, Warner Bros./Reprise, and recorded Wrecking Ball (1995) with the producer Daniel Lanois, acclaimed for his work with U2, Peter Gabriel, and Bob Dylan. The twelve-track album highlighted Harris's ethereal voice, surrounding it with hypnotic percussion and atmospheric beauty. She reinterpreted songs by the rock artists Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, and Steve Earle, and she transformed them into ghostly spirituals of regret and redemption. It was a bold musical departure that opened the door to a broad new audience of younger fans.

Harris was a beacon for rock artists who identified with country music's classic soulfulness and rebellious impulses, but who shunned the slick formulas that held sway over its commercial mainstream. Harris sang harmony on hundreds of albums, and she executive-produced a tribute to Parsons that featured his songs performed by alternative rockers including Beck, Wilco, and Whiskeytown. She was pivotal in keeping alive Parson's legacy: that of a venturesome maverick who seeks to redeem country music from its commercial leanings with stirring reminders of its roots in the yearnings of the human heart.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Gliding Bird (Jubilee, 1970); Pieces of the Sky (Reprise, 1975); Elite Hotel (Reprise, 1976); Luxury Liner (Warner Bros., 1977); Quarter Moon in a Ten-Cent Town (Warner Bros., 1978); Profile: The Best of Emmylou Harris (Warner Bros., 1978); Blue Kentucky Girl (Warner Bros., 1979); Roses in the Snow (Warner Bros., 1980); The Ballad of Sally Rose (Warner Bros., 1985); Thirteen (Warner Bros., 1986); Angel Band (Warner Bros., 1987); Bluebird (Warner Bros., 1989); Duets (Warner Bros., 1990); Brand New Dance (Warner Bros., 1990); At the Ryman (Warner Bros., 1992); Cowgirl's Prayer (Asylum, 1993); Wrecking Ball (Asylum, 1995); Portraits (Warner Bros., 1996); Spyboy (Eminent, 1998); Red Dirt Girl (Nonesuch, 2000); Anthology: The Warner/Reprise Years (Warner Archives/Reprise/Rhino, 2001).