Sweetheart of everyone's rodeo

Return to the new west (part 4)

I had heard of Emmylou Harris before 'Sounds of the New West', of course (Irish folk singer Christy Moore had a song a long long time ago about the Lisoonvarna matchmaking/music festival which name-checked her), and I had bought her 'Wrecking Ball' CD some years ago, having known the Neil Young song and also because hearing some of the songs on radio perked my interest.

I have since bought several of her solo CDs, which all feature some lovely songs (particularly, I think, 'Red Dirt Girl'), but I still believe her greatest talent, as Gram Parsons perhaps was the first to recognise, many years ago, is in lending her unique vocal talents to other artists, particularly male ones, in duets. After Gram's death, her work has been a fairly prolific mix of such duets and solo work, and some of her solo work is a bit, for me, too traditional slow country (see a good overview of her career on Wikipedia here). A very old clip of her in action with Johnny Cash is below:

In the last ten years or so, she has become a sort of fairy godmother to the whole alt-country scene, appearing on albums all over the place to bestow her blessing (and implicitly that of the great god Gram) on these newcomers who unapologietically worship at her (and his) feet. My favourite Emmylou duets are 'We are nowhere and it's now' with Bright Eyes and 'Oh my sweet Carolina' with Ryan Adams. She has also guested with a few more mature souls, including 'Coming around' with Steve Earle and 'Beachcombing' with Mark Knopfler (okay, so he doesn't quite fit the list, but she did record an entire album with him).

She also does a wonderful duet with Elvis Costello on 'Heart-shaped bruise' on his album 'The delivery man', as well as this lovely version of 'Love Hurts' (originally by Gram himself, of course):

I will come back to Emmylou later in this series of posts, as Uncut awarded her the singular honour of two songs in the 'Sounds of the new west' CD (fitting really, given her overwhelming mentoring role in the whole movement), but for now, I will leave with two versions of her doing 'Wrecking Ball', the first a fairly straightforward live version, and the second the album version set very poignantly to footage of the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

As well as her role in guiding and inspiring the alt-country movement, comment must of course be made of the pure beauty both of her music and herself; she is really a queen with a level of sheer class that cannot be ignored, the sweetheart of everyone's rodeo.