Harris, Emmylou

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Emmylou Harris

Singer, songwriter, guitarist

Many country singers have achieved success by crossing over into the lucrative pop market. The dulcet-voiced Emmylou Harris has done just the opposite—she culls songs from pop and rock and transforms them into pure country fare. Harris, one of the most popular singers in Nashville, is praised on every side for the respect she holds for traditional country music. To quote Alanna Nash in Esquire magazine, the performer “has not only carried on the mission of taking pure, traditional country to a hip, pop audience, but through her own artistry and integrity has helped raise the music to a new position of respectability, carving an identity for herself unique in all of country music.”

In Country Music U.S.A., Bill C. Malone observes that Harris seems dedicated to the preservation of older country music, the sound of the Carter Family, Hank Williams, and George Jones. Still, Malone writes, “Harris is a true eclectic, borrowing from many styles. Her concerts and Ips contain a mixture of contemporary and traditional material, rock-flavored songs and Appalachian-sounding ballads, and modern country-and-western numbers.” It is Harris’s vocal abilities that guarantee her an audience, no matter the style of her presentation. A Time magazine correspondent characterizes her singing as “more… Melancholy Appalachian bluegrass than… western swing,” adding: “Despite its range, her voice is most telling because of its feathery delicacy, an almost tentative dying fall capable of stirring deep emotions.”

Harris was born in Alabama, but she grew up in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. Her father was in the Marine Corps, and her family moved often, though never back to the Deep South. Harris has recollected that her older brother liked country music much more than she did; her own musical preferences included folk and pop/rock. As a teenager she was a cheerleader who played saxophone in her high school marching band. She told Time: “High schools are real hip now, but there was no counterculture in Woodbridge [Virginia].”

After a year of studies at the University of North Carolina, Harris took off for New York City in search of the counterculture. Like so many other young people, she drifted to Greenwich Village, where she sang country and folk music in coffeehouses and nightclubs, sometimes earning as little as ten dollars a night. In 1970 she and her first husband moved to Nashville to try their luck in the country format. She failed to hit there, and her marriage dissolved. With a newborn baby to care for, she returned to her parents’ home in Maryland and began singing at clubs in Washington, D.C. Her performances at the Red Fox Inn and the Cellar Door were hailed by Washington audiences that were already

For the Record…

Born April 2, 1947 in Birmingham, Ala.; daughter of a career Marine officer; married Tom Slocum (a songwriter), c. 1968 (divorced); married Brian Ahern (a record producer), January, 1977 (divorced); married Paul Kennerley (a songwriter), 1985; children: (first marriage) Hallie, (second marriage) Meghann. Education: Attended University of North Carolina, 1965.

Country singer-songwriter, 1967—; began career as solo folk singer in coffeehouses and nightclubs; sang backup with Gram Parsons band, 1971-73; signed with Warner Bros., 1974, cut first album, Pieces of the Sky, 1975. Has made numerous tours and concert appearances. President of the Country Music Foundation, 1983—.

Awards: Grammy Awards 1976, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1984, and 1987, including for best country album, 1980, for Blue Kentucky Girl; Country Music Association award for best album, 1980, for Roses in the Snow. Named female vocalist of the year by the Country Music Association, 1980; album of the year citation from Academy of Country Music, 1987, for Trio.

Addresses: Other— P.O. Box 4471, North Hollywood, CA 91607.

becoming known for a special receptivity to country-folk-bluegrass blends.

Harris met Gram Parsons in Washington in 1972. Parsons, formerly with the Byrds, was a primary force in the burgeoning country-rock movement. He was so impressed with Harris’s voice and delivery that he invited her to join him in Los Angeles to sing backup on his first solo album. Harris was delighted by the offer, and over the ensuing two years she became Parson’s protege, learning from him the special roots of country and honky-tonk music. “It was an ear-opening period for me,” Harris told Newsweek. “I’d always liked Hank Williams and Buck Owens, but with Gram I discovered that country music was a natural form of singing for me.”

In 1973 Parsons died of a heart attack, brought on by drug abuse. Left to her own resources, Harris formed a band and signed with Warner Bros, records. There she was paired with Brian Ahern, a gifted producer who gladly followed her natural tendencies not to strive for a pop sound. In short order Harris was climbing the country charts with hits like the Louvin Brothers’ “If I Could Only Win Your Love,” A. P. Carter’s “Hello, Stranger,” and Buck Owens’s “Together Again.” Harris and Ahern were married in 1977.

Harris may have shown an unusual dedication to country music, but she also had an ear honed by folk and rock—she and Ahern recorded a trove of offbeat songs such as “Poncho and Lefty,” by Townes Van Zandt, “The Boxer,” by Paul Simon, and tunes by the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen. Her forte remained the ballad, however. Nash is one of many critics who suggest that Harris’s best ballad work shows “a vulnerability rooted in the dark recesses of the soul.”

Fueled by the “plaintive, piney-woods feeling evoked by her sweet, sinewy soprano,” to quote Newsweek, Harris’s albums went gold in America and Europe. Some of her best songs were written by members of her top-rate backup group, the Hot Band, whose membership included Ricky Scaggs and Rodney Crowell. From time to time she cut tracks with other country superstars, including Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt. By 1980, when she was voted best female vocalist of the year by the Country Music Association, Harris was among the most successful pure-country performers in the nation. Unlike Parton and Ronstadt, she chose to adhere to the country format—and to singing in general.

Critics generally agree that Harris has recorded two “masterworks.” The first is Roses in the Snow, a work from the early 1980s that is decidedly bluegrass in flavor. With its acoustic accompaniments and traditional songs, Roses in the Snow harks back to the work of the Carter Family, Ralph Stanley, and Flatt & Scruggs; it was a surprise commercial success for Harris. Her other outstanding accomplishment to date is the “country opera” album The Ballad of Sally Rose, a theme piece for which Harris wrote the lyrics herself. Based loosely on Harris’s own life, The Ballad of Sally Rose follows a woman singer through the heights and depths of her career. In Stereo Review, Nash observes that the work “carries a desperation, a smoldering, aching passion to connect with the poignant realities that live in the heart and not just the head.”

For many years Harris worked out of Los Angeles in studios she built with Ahern. When that marriage ended, she returned to Nashville and based herself there. Today she is married to Paul Kennerley, a Grammy Award-winning songwriter who helped her with The Ballad of Sally Rose. Harris has truly achieved success by following her own formula—by surrounding herself with a fine, distinctive backup band, by recording a quaint mixture of traditional, modern, and original tunes, and by presenting them all in a fine voice. “Even though my records don’t go platinum,” she said, “and I’m not a household word, I can do basically what I want, and get the same number of people to buy the records. That gives me a leverage to be able to experiment, and be able to do what I want. I’m very grateful for that. I really am aware of how important that is, to be able to enjoy what I do.”