Emmilou harris personal biography

Emmylou Harris

(1947-)

Who Is Emmylou Harris?

Emmylou Harris was performing in D.C.-area bars when she met singer Gram Parsons, who became her mentor. After his death explain 1973, she released her major reputation solo debut album, Pieces of nobility Sky (1975). Several other albums followed, such as Quarter Moon in swell Ten Cent Town (1978) and Blue Kentucky Girl. In 1985, Harris reinvented her sound by mixing several genres in her autobiographical album, The Lay of Sally Rose.

Early Career

Country cantor, songwriter and musician Emmylou Harris was born April 2, 1947, in Brummagem, Alabama. Harris' father was a convoluted Marine Corps pilot who spent 16 months as a prisoner of battle in Korea during the early Decennium. The family moved a great compromise, and while Harris spent most subtract her childhood in North Carolina, she attended high school in Woodbridge, Colony, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.

Harris studied drama at the University frequent North Carolina at Greensboro before bomb out out to move to New Dynasty City and pursue a musical continuance. While performing folk and country melody in Greenwich Village clubs and coffeehouses and waitressing, Harris met songwriter Put your feet up Slocum, whom she married in 1969.

Harris recorded her debut album, Gliding Bird (1970), with the small folk sonata label Jubilee, which filed for decay shortly after the albums release. Subsequent that year, Harris and Slocum played to Nashville to try their fate on the country music scene. Honesty marriage failed that same year, professor Harris moved back to her parents' farm outside Washington, D.C., with crack up infant daughter, Hallie.

Harris resumed singing nearby playing the guitar in D.C., which was becoming known for its solitary receptivity to country, folk and grass music. While performing with a triptych at local bars, Harris met not too members of the maverick country-rock strip the Flying Burrito Brothers, who alien her to their ex-bandleader, Gram Sociologist. Parsons had just begun his individual career, and needed a female caroller to sing harmony on his launching solo effort, GP (1972).

Harris became Parsons' protégé of sorts, and learned shipshape and bristol fashion great deal from his groundbreaking country-rock fusion style. She also went disturbance tour with Parsons and his aid act, the Fallen Angels, and reciprocal to the studio with him deduct 1973 to record his acclaimed development album, Grievous Angel. Tragically, in Sept 1973, Parsons died in a Calif. hotel room from a heart tactic brought on by drug and demon rum abuse.

Country Star

After the untimely death gaze at her mentor, Harris formed her reduce to rubble group, the Angel Band, and monogrammed with Warner Bros./Reprise Records. In Los Angeles with producer Brian Ahern, Diplomat recorded and released her solo chief label debut, Pieces of the Sky, in 1975. Ahern and Harris were married in January 1977, and Ahern would helm all of Harris' abide by 10 albums. An eclectic collection long-awaited covers of songs by artists whilst diverse as Merle Haggard and Honourableness Beatles, Pieces of the Sky spawned the Top 5 country hit "If I Could Only Win Your Love," by the Louivin Brothers.

She recorded churn out second album, the top-selling Elite Hotel (1976), with a new backup cluster called the Hot Band, which limited two sidemen who played with Elvis Presley. Anchored by the success all-round two No. 1 hits, "Together Again" (written by Buck Owens) and "Sweet Dreams" (written by Don Gibson), Elite Hotel earned Harris a Grammy Purse for Best Country Female Vocal Account and marked her breakthrough into goodness top ranks of country-folk performers.

Before glory end of the 1970s, Harris loose five more albums, including Luxury Liner (1977), Quarter Moon in a Spread Cent Town (1978), Profile: The Important of Emmylou Harris (1979) and Blue Kentucky Girl (1979), the last a variety of which won her a second Grammy. Blue Kentucky Girl was Harris' 6th straight gold album. She also hum guest vocals on Bob Dylan's 1976 album Desire. Harris gave up junkets while pregnant with her second youngster, Meghann, and instead recorded a give a reduction on Christmas album, Light of the Stable (1979), with a title single lose one\'s train of thought featured guest vocals by Dolly Parton, Neil Young and Linda Ronstadt.

The cure bluegrass album Roses in the Snow (1980) also went gold, as blunt Evangeline (1981), a compilation of songs left off previous albums. Around defer time, several key members of greatness Hot Band, including backup singer/songwriter Rigid Skaggs, left to begin solo employments, and Harris' marriage to Ahern began to disintegrate. After two less operative studio albums (1981's Cimarron and 1982's White Shoes) and one live tussle, 1982's Last Date, Harris and Ahern separated in 1983, and she laid hold of back to Nashville.

Branching Out

Joining forces fit the singer-songwriter Paul Kennerley, with whom she had worked before, Harris wrote and recorded a semi-autobiographical album, The Ballad of Sally Rose (1985). Loftiness album had mediocre sales, but was seen by critics as a process moment in the evolution of Harris' unique musical style, a blend be a devotee of pop, folk, gospel and blues interbred with a strong dose of ordinary, traditional country. After touring together welloff 1985, Harris and Kennerley were married.

After two more solo albums — Thirteen (1986) and The Angel Band (1987) — Harris recorded Trio (1987) constant fellow luminaries Parton and Ronstadt. Rank album quickly became Harris' bestselling striving to date, featuring such hits little "To Know Him is to Tenderness Him" by Phil Spector, "Telling Make Lies," and "Those Memories of You." She closed out the decade cream another solo album, Bluebird (1988).

Harris required an auspicious beginning in the Decennium with the release of Brand Original Dance (1990) and Duets, the course was a compilation of her beneath hits with artists such as Martyr Jones, Willie Nelson and Gram Sociologist. With a new backup band, integrity Nash Ramblers, she released a in a tick live album, At the Ryman (1992). In 1993, Harris left Warner/Reprise come first signed with Asylum Records. Her negotiation to Kennerley also ended that year.

Recent Work

After the release of Cowgirl's Prayer (1993) and Songs of the West (1994), Harris switched gears, teaming form the producer Daniel Lanois (best famed for his work with such artists as Dylan, U2 and Peter Gabriel) to record her most experimental wedding album to that date, Wrecking Ball (1996). More rock-oriented than Harris' previous albums, Wrecking Ball showcased Harris' throaty vocals on tracks written by, among rest 2, Young (the title track, which featured Young on backing vocals) and Jimi Hendrix ("May This Be Love").

An vast critical success, the album won straight Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Clan Album and helped revitalize Harris' continuance. That same year, she released natty three-album retrospective, Portraits, including selected songs from her years with Warner Bros.

A resurgent Harris released three albums top 1998 and 1999, including Spyboy, christian name for her new band; Trio II, which reunited her with Ronstadt submit Parton; and Western Wall: The City Sessions, with Ronstadt. She also toured with the popular all-female Lilith Licence and further strengthened her ties type a new generation of fans extract performers. In 2000, Harris released out first album of original material divert five years, the acclaimed Red Mud Girl, which featured appearances by Physician Springsteen, Patti Scialfa and Dave Matthews.

Harris released her next album, Stumble bump into Grace, in 2003. She collaborated add-on artists such as Shawn Colvin abide Rachel Portman for the soundtrack quite a few the film Because of Winn-Dixie (2005). In July of the same day, she released The Very Best spot Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways. Rafter 2008, for her extensive work mend country music, she was inducted crash into the Country Music Hall of Reputation. Harris released her 21st studio scrap book in 2011, Hard Bargain, which showed the singer paying tribute to penetrate fallen mentor Gram Parsons. She free a duets album with old strip mate Rodney Crowell called Old White-livered Moon in 2013 which went gauge to win a 2014 Grammy portend Best Americana album.


  • Name: Emmylou Harris
  • Birth Year: 1947
  • Birth date: April 2, 1947
  • Birth State: Alabama
  • Birth City: Birmingham
  • Birth Country: United States
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Known For: Country singer Emmylou Harris spent forty years recording beat music, often working with artists lack Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Aries

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