Can't Control My Dreams

Emmylou Harris and Don Everly : Every Time You Leave

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In April of 1979, Emmylou Harris released Blue Kentucky Girl, a Grammy winning collection of mostly classic country songs, many sung with other artists including Don Everly on the excellent Louvin Brothers cover "Every Time You Leave". Married to producer Brian Ahern and raising three children, Harris continues to explore the roots of contemporary country music.

This is the album where you'll find Emmylou's cover of "Hickory Wind", the most touching of Gram Parsons songs and the one she'd sing back up to when they toured together.  She sounds as homesick as an orphan.

"Beneath Still Waters" , originally recorded by George Jones, would hit #1 in 1980 while both "Save the Last Dance for Me" (originally recorded by The Drifters)  and the title track (originally recorded by Loretta Lynn) were Top 10 Country hits. 

Also notable is the track "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" featuring Dolly Parton and an uncredited Linda Ronstadt years before their hugely successful 1987 Trio album came out. 

Those Crazy Chances

In January of 1978, Emmylou Harris released Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town, of the best and yet most overlooked albums in here catalog. The album benefits from two signature Rodney Crowell compositions. Harris would repay Crowell by singing on his debut album released later in the year.

Rolling Stone recently listed the album #21 in its web article 50 Country Albums Every Rock Fan Should Own, writing: 

As Gram Parsons' muse and duet partner, Harris was central to country-rock's birth — but that's not why she is listed here. On Quarter Moon and other albums that spanned decades, she inhabited songs with a voice that concentrated tenderness, strength and worldliness into a powerfully fragile moan that left fans and artists of all genres thunderstruck. Her versions here of Delbert McClinton's "Two More Bottles of Wine" and Rodney Crowell's "Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight" and "I Ain't Living Long Like This" rock with a remarkably breezy ache. With exquisite backing from her Hot Band (including guitar legends James Burton and Albert Lee, bluegrass whiz Ricky Skaggs, the Band's Garth Hudson and Rick Danko, et al.), she never settled for folkie earnestness or pretty trilling. A tough-minded wisdom always lurked, especially on Dolly Parton's "To Daddy," which Harris channeled like an O. Henry short story.

700 Little Records

Emmylou Harris : C'est La Vie

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"There are two kinds of men in this world. Those in love with Emmylou Harris and those who have not met Emmylou Harris..."

-Willie Nelson

In January of 1977, Emmylou Harris released her fourth album, Luxury Liner. It would become her best selling album of all time and top the country charts, thanks to her rollicking Chuck Berry cover "C'est La Vie ( You Never Can Tell), "Making Believe"( originally a hit for Kitty Wells) and the first known cover of Townes Van Zandt's 1972 song "Pancho and Lefty".  Listening to the album, ytou'll find yourself in awe of the great musicianship (including rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist Rodney Crowell) and the purity of Emmylou's voice. Later in the year she would marry her producer, Brian Ahern. 

Sweet Dreams of You

Emmylou Harris : Sweet Dreams

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On January 2, 1977 Emmylou Harris's 1975 recording of  Don Gibson's "Sweet Dreams" sat atop the US Country charts. Though the song is most often associated with Patsy Cline, this live rendition from Elite Hotel is the only version that ever went to Number One.

Don Gibson was one of Pete Townshend's favorite songwriters. Later in the year Townshend would record Gibson's #1 1976 country hit "Til The Rivers All Run Dry" on Rough Mix, an album he made with his friend Ronnie Lane of the Faces.

40 Year Itch: Oh These Sleepless Nights

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“I suppose working with Gram (Parsons) was the most amazing thing that ever happened to me. There was just something very magical about the experience. It was so much fun to just get up there, sing with him, and not worry about carrying a show myself. Everyone paid all this attention to me and told me how good I was and all that. It was really like being some kind of fairytale princess. Somehow that affected me more than all this that’s happening now. Maybe I’m on time delay.”

Emmylou Harris to Cameron Crowe in 1975

     On her first solo album since the death of country-rock legend Gram Parsons, his devastated singing partner,  Emmylou Harris, carried on in the cosmic country vein. Pieces of the Sky, released in February of 1975,  is an eclectic collection of songs. There's a Beatles cover ("For No One") some recent country hits covered ("Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down,"Coat of Many Colors") and an original, "Boulder to Birmingham", dedicated to Parsons. It was Gram who introduced Harris to the Louvin Brothers and to the Everly Brothers' songwriting team, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. She performs their "Sleepless Nights", a song she and Parson had recorded during the Grievous Angel sessions. You can hear the heartbreak in the simple lines.

40 Year Itch: Love Is Like A Cloud

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Four months after ex Byrds and former Flying Burrito Brother Gram Parsons was found dead at the age of 26 of an overdose in a Joshua Tree,CA motel, his second solo album, Grievous Angel, was released to critical acclaim and little interest from record buyers. They were still buying albums from the singer who died the day after Parsons, Jim Croce. 

      What did they miss? Well. Grievous Angel sounds like a hodgepodge of  tracks from various sessions. It's padded with cover versions. There are a couple of tunes Parsons quickly tossed together and, in "Ooh Las Vegas", there's a reject from the first solo album, GP. 

      And yet, here lies the best of the solo albums, full of soulful country rock,  highlighted by the slower tunes: "Brass Buttons", "Hearts On Fire", "Love Hurts" and "In My Hour of Darkness". 

  With the exception of "Brass Buttons", written when Parson was still a Harvard undergrad, all the slower ones feature a then unknown Emmylou Harris on harmonizing vocals. 

   The mix is about 50-50 and when you pan the speakers on some of the tunes, like "Love Hurts", Grievous Angel sounds like it could be her album. Her enduring career is part of his legacy as are those he influenced, including everyone from The Eagles to Wilco. GP and Grievous Angel are now purchased together on the same CD.