Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris is the patron saint of what's come to be known as alternative country. Her sad soprano harmonies on Gram Parsons' two early-'70s solo albums (GP and Grievous Angel) introduced a young interpretive singer who would help to alter the look and sound of Nashville. Stepping out on her own, Harris forged a soft country-rock style that appeals to fans of both genres. Her enduring influence on music is wide ranging, spanning from New Traditionalist country singers like Dwight Yoakam to such post punk country rockers as Ryan Adams and Kasey Chambers. Harris' immaculate tone and gentle phrasing may not sit well with purists (of rock or country), but it's hard to argue with her creative spirit, her taste in material -- or her execution.

Harris' albums are inconsistent up until Luxury Liner, on which her signature crystalline voice really takes shape. Her interpretations of the Louvin Brothers ("When I Stop Dreaming"), Townes Van Zandt ("Poncho and Lefty"), and even Chuck Berry ("[You Never Can Tell] C'est La Vie") are strikingly original. The newfound confidence she brings to the album can be attributed, in part, to the strong backing band, which includes such future country-rock luminaries as Ricky Skaggs, Rodney Crowell, and Brit picker Albert Lee.

On Quarter Moon, Harris breaks her dependence on the music of her mentor; for the first time she doesn't cover one of Gram Parsons' songs. Instead, she focuses on living songwriters like Crowell, and the result is an album that feels alive (especially her reading of Dolly Parton's proto feminist missive "To Daddy"). Sparked by the bluegrass accompaniment of Skaggs, Harris made a convincing roots move on Blue Kentucky Girl and Roses in the Snow, the latter of which flows with grace and respect for the old-time, Anglo-Celtic origins of her sound.

Harris stumbled in the early 1980s, having lost some of her audience to punk and new wave. Her albums suffered. Save for a heartfelt rendering of James Taylor's compassionate "Millworker," Evangeline stalled at the gates; Cimarron wasn't much better. To her credit, Harris kept "Movin' On" when the New Traditionalist movement -- which she'd prefigured by a decade -- began churning out cookie-cutter cowboys. Turning to pop with the same measured grace she brought to folk and bluegrass, she fills White Shoes with some boggling cover selections (Donna Summer's "On the Radio"?) and boldly flirts with autobiography on her Red Headed Stranger-like concept album The Ballad of Sally Rose.

On her lucky Thirteen, Harris returns to her roots again, but with less success than she had on Roses in the Snow. Angel Band is a solid but low-key set of old-time gospel songs, and Trio finds the singer joining forces with her sometime collaborators Parton and Linda Ronstadt for a light but enjoyable set of harmony-based songs. Harris closed out the '80s with Bluebird, a set of folk and country rock from left-field songwriters such as Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Tom Rush, and Texas troubadour Butch Hancock. The highlight, however, is her simple, aching interpretation of Johnny Cash's "I Still Miss Someone." Harris' last album for Warner Bros. (Brand New Dance) was an uninspired misfire, complete with a bad Bruce Springsteen cover.

When she switched from Warner Bros. to Elektra, in 1993, Harris got a renewed blast of creative energy. The mix of lightness and depth on Cowgirl's Prayer goes to the heart of her talents as an interpretive singer. And the song selection is sterling, from the Leonard Cohen-penned title track to Harris' down-and-dirty version of Lucinda Williams' "Crescent City." Nothing, however, prefigured the grace and brilliance of Wrecking Ball, on which Emmylou Harris shoves at the boundaries of both country and pop. Enlisting producer Daniel Lanois (Bob Dylan, U2) to give her sound the atmospheric feel of artists normally associated with the experimental-rock label 4AD (Cocteau Twins, Breeders), Harris reinterprets the music of a variety of songwriters, from Neil Young (the title track) and Jimi Hendrix ("May This Be Love") to Kate McGarrigle ("Going Back to Harlan"), Lucinda Williams ("Sweet Old World"), and Gillian Welch ("Orphan Girl"). Wrecking Ball polarized the critics, but no one can deny the gauzy sizzle of Harris' voice, her gorgeous, emotional phrasing, or the haunting nature of these interpretations. If for no other reason (and there are many reasons), the sheer ambitiousness of Wrecking Ball makes it Harris' masterpiece -- a full two decades into her solo career.

Having taken the road less traveled with Wrecking Ball, Harris wrote and recorded Red Dirt Girl with the same atmospheric feel as its predecessor, but this time she sang her own songs. It was only the second time Harris had recorded an album of all-original material (The Ballad of Sally Rose being the first), and the strength of the material raises the question "Why?" From the gospelish "Pearl" to the heartbreaking title track and the tough talk of "I Don't Wanna Talk About It," Red Dirt Girl reveals the natural songwriter that's been lurking inside Harris all along. Stumble Into Grace continues in the vein of Red Dirt Girl, with Harris writing most of the songs and producer Malcolm Burn staying with the spare and gauzy sound begun on Wrecking Ball. While the atmospherics are no longer so refreshingly new, Stumble is as strong as its two predecessors. The sound now fits Harris like the white dress she wears on the cover, and the collaborations -- with Kate and Anna McGarrigle on "Little Bird" and Lucious Jackson's Jill Cunniff on the biting social commentary of "Time in Babylon" -- are just right. Harris teams with her old friend Linda Ronstadt on "Strong Hand," a powerful ode to American music matriarch June Carter Cash.

The two Profile albums are solid best-of collections, but their brevity makes them less than satisfying. Duets is a definitive selection of what some folks feel is Harris' true calling: harmony vocals. Songs of the West gathers her cowboy laments. Anthology is a solid place to start for a summary of Harris' purest years on Warner Bros. Records. But nothing fully represents Harris' pre-Elektra years as well as the three-CD Portraits, a strong selection of songs that includes a handful of her early duets with Gram Parsons. The live Last Date is a bit schizophrenic, but she makes up for it on At the Ryman, a wide-ranging assortment of covers performed at the original home of the Grand Ole Opry, with the all-acoustic Nashville Ramblers. Spyboy is a post-Lanois live set that lends Harris' newfound atmospheric feel to some of her old chestnuts. (MARK COLEMAN/MARK KEMP)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide