Emmylou Harris (elected 2008)

Born: April 2, 1947 -

Career Achieved National Prominence Between 1975 and the Present

Emmylou Harris was born April 2, 1947 in Birmingham, Ala., to Walter and Eugenia Harris. Her father was a Marine Corps officer and the family moved as her father’s position required. She spent much of her childhood in North Carolina before moving to Woodbridge, Va., while in her teens.

Harris took up guitar as a teenager inspired by the folk music of Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger. Starving-artist stints in New York City and Nashville led to regular club work in Washington D.C. where Chris Hillman first saw her
perform. Hillman and Country-rock visionary Gram Parsons had been band mates in The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, but now Parsons was on his own doing solo material and had told his former band mate he was looking for “a chick singer” for his first solo record.

Hillman had seen Harris perform at a club in DC and told Parsons about her, but they didn’t know how to get in touch with her. A chance encounter between Harris’ babysitter, Hillman and Parsons led to Harris flying to Los Angeles in 1972 to sing on Parsons’ first solo record. Harris went on to become his permanent duet partner setting a new standard for harmonies and duet vocals.

After Parsons’ untimely death in 1973, Harris emerged as a solo star with Pieces of the Sky in 1975. The album electrified the Country Music world, becoming her first in a series of annual Gold or Platinum albums through the ‘70s.

Around the same time Harris created the Hot Band featuring many of the musicians from Pieces of the Sky. Among the first members were Elvis Presley’s bassist Emory Gordy Jr., pianist Glen D. Hardin and lead guitarist James Burton. After nine months Burton left the band due to conflicts with Presley’s schedule and was replaced by Albert Lee. Other original Hot Band members included pedal steel player Hank DeVito, drummer John Ware and a young singer/songwriter/guitarist named Rodney Crowell. With the Hot Band backing her, Harris opened shows for a diverse group of artists ranging from Elton John to Conway Twitty, James Taylor and more, and quickly gained a reputation for its superb musicianship on record and on the road.

1. Crowell would leave the band in 1978 for a solo career, though he would continue to perform with Harris as schedules allowed. For the next four years, Crowell’s place in the Hot Band was filled by Ricky Skaggs. Skaggs also left for a solo career and was replaced by Barry Tashian. When Hardin left he was briefly replaced by another former Presley sideman, Tony Brown. In 1980, Brown, DeVito and Gordy left the Hot Band to tour behind Crowell as the Cherry Bombs.

Her next three releases (Elite Hotel, Luxury Liner and Quarter Moon in a Ten-Cent Town) made her a Country-rock leader, and since then Harris has been regarded as a key figure in the movement that united rock audiences with Country traditionalists. She was among the artists who made Country Music “hip” and brought it to a vast youth market. Then she led the way back to neo-traditionalist sounds with 1979’s Blue Kentucky Girl. The following year, Roses In the Snow paved the road toward the bluegrass revival of the ‘80s. Harris rose to become the authentic voice of Country with these albums, as well as Evangeline, Cimarron and Bluebird.

Over the next few years, Harris released several solo projects, but her most successful album during this time was 1987’s Trio, with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. The three singers had talked of recording an album together for more than a decade, and it was worth the wait. The critically-acclaimed project was certified Platinum by the RIAA for sales of one million units and reached No. 6 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart. The trio would also win the 1988 CMA Vocal Event of the Year Award. Eleven years later, the women reunited to release Trio II, which earned the three singers a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for their performance on “After the Gold Rush” and a Gold certification from the RIAA.

By the early 1990s Harris changed her sound again with the acoustic band The Nash Ramblers, featuring Larry Atamanuik, Sam Bush, Roy Huskey Jr., Al Perkins and Jon Randall. Together, they honored Country Music’s most legendary concert hall with the At the Ryman album, winning the 1992 Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group

Three years later, Harris took a leading role in yet another musical revolution—the Americana movement that gave Country Music its “alternative” wing. Continuing to expand boundaries, this time she paired with producer Daniel Lanois and reinvented her sound. The result was her 1995 watershed album, Wrecking Ball, for which she earned another Grammy Award. The album was hailed by critics as a masterpiece and portrayed a new side of Harris – spiritual yet sexual, and a woman with very eclectic tastes.  She followed Wrecking Ball with the live album Spyboy and closed the decade with a powerful album of duets with Ronstadt, Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions.

Harris performed “Didn’t Leave Nobody But the Baby” with Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch for the O Brother, Where Art Thou? movie soundtrack album, which became a phenomenon in 2000. The album was named the 2001 CMA Album of the Year, the 2001 Grammy Album of the Year and the 2001 Grammy Soundtrack Album of the Year, among other honors.
 
With 2000’s Red Dirt Girl, she released the first album of her career that was nearly entirely comprised of Harris-penned songs. The album, and its follow-up, 2003’s Stumble Into Grace, revealed her remarkable songwriting talent, and further demonstrated Harris’ diverse musical influences, mixing world music instrumentation and rock rhythms into her Country and folk confidence and verve.

In 2006, she teamed with guitar virtuoso Mark Knopfler to release the album All the Roadrunning, which had been recorded over seven years. Also that year, she was a featured performer in the documentary Neil Young: Heart of Gold.

In 2007, Rhino Records celebrated Harris’ distinguished career by releasing Songbird: Rare Tracks and Forgotten Gems, a DVD and 4-CD box set featuring previously unreleased material, demos, studio tracks, collaborative work with other artists, and a collection of videos and performances beginning with the Hot Band in the 1970s. Her forthcoming studio album will be released on Nonesuch Records in the spring.

The wide range of Harris’ repertoire is mirrored by the musicians who have sought her out as a collaborator. She has recorded with artists from diverse points on the musical compass including The Band, Bright Eyes, Johnny Cash, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, Vince Gill, George Jones, Little Feat, Lyle Lovett, Bill Monroe, Roy Orbison, Bonnie Raitt, Don Williams, Lucinda Williams, Tammy Wynette, Neil Young, and many others.  

Harris has received three CMA Awards, including Female Vocalist of the Year in 1980. She has received 12 Grammy Awards, including four for Best Country Vocal Performance, Female (1976, 1979, 1984, 2005) and two for Best Contemporary Folk Album (1995 for Wrecking Ball and 2000 for Red Dirt Girl). She is a member of the Grand Ole Opry and serves as Trustee Emeritus of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

In 1999, Billboard honored her with its prestigious Century Award, aptly calling her a “truly venturesome, genre-transcending pathfinder.” Los Angeles Times praised the unfaltering quality of her work, saying, Harris “has made consistently outstanding musical choices over her 35-plus-year career.” But perhaps even more outstanding than her accolades is her beautifully crystalline voice, about which New York Times says, it “inhabits her songs like a wraith, intangible but omnipresent.”

Official Website: http://www.EmmylouHarris.com