Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris is one of the most celebrated performers in the history of country music, with twenty-two albums that have cracked Billboard's genre top 10 (ten of which also reached the overall top 40) and a long list of awards (including thirteen Grammys, won between 1977 and 2018).

Her career took several years to take off. Born in Alabama but raised in various parts of the United States due to her military father's constant relocations, she fell in love with folk music as a teenager, during the recording boom built around Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and a few years later decided to drop out of university to pursue a career as a singer.

She moved to New York and started frequenting Greenwich Village, where she performed often, eventually finding an opening in the record industry. Her debut album, "Gliding Bird" (1970), went largely unnoticed, partly due to the financial troubles then plaguing Jubilee, the label that released it. Split evenly between covers and original songs, it was later disowned by the artist herself (it has never been reissued on CD and remains unavailable on any streaming service to this day).

By now disillusioned with the entertainment industry, Harris moved back in with her parents in Washington D.C., but kept performing live whenever she could. One night, during a show at The Cellar Door, a small venue in the capital, she was spotted by the Flying Burrito Bros, who immediately got in touch with Gram Parsons, their former member, who at the time was looking for a female voice to sing harmonies. From there the two began collaborating: Parsons took her on tour with him and had her sing on his two albums, especially the second one, "Grievous Angel", which he wanted to credit as a joint effort with her.

Sadly, Parsons never lived to see the project completed, as he died of an overdose on September 19, 1973. Gretchen, his widow, decided to release the record under his name alone, driven by the intense jealousy she felt toward Harris, even though everyone in the entourage always maintained that the bond between the two singers was strictly professional. Harris was nonetheless credited in the liner notes as vocalist on eight of the nine tracks and co-writer of "In My Hour Of Darkness".

Thanks to Parsons, Harris developed a passion for country, a genre she had never particularly considered before. However, Parsons's two albums never won over the country audience: even though what runs through their grooves is, to all intents and purposes, more country than rock, Parsons's past stints in rock bands like the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Bros made him come across as an outsider to the scene. What's more, he belonged neither to the Nashville establishment nor to the emerging outlaw movement that was rising as an alternative to it at the time.

After the tragedy, Harris was more determined than ever to pursue a career of her own: Reprise, the same label that had released Parsons's records, signed her shortly afterward. "Pieces Of The Sky", her second solo album and the first in her new guise as a country singer, came out in February 1975 and was an immediate success, climbing all the way to number 45 on Billboard's weekly chart. For a country singer to come close to the top 40 on her first attempt was quite a rare feat at the time.

Her decisions to strip away the rock element entirely and favor a relaxed sound, with arrangements faithful to honky tonk and traditional country, proved to be winning choices, especially at a time dominated by the bloated orchestrations of the countrypolitan sound, not to mention the urban cowboy movement that would soon even flirt with disco music: Harris thus fell in with those pushing back against country's excessive commercialization, and audiences rewarded her for it, perceiving her as authentic.

From then on, her career seemed unstoppable, with a string of hits that established her as one of the genre's leading performers. Even so, she never really made a name for herself as a songwriter, contributing at most one track per record. Over time she began to see this as a gap, and so, after "White Shoes", released in the autumn of 1983, she started conceiving an album of entirely original material.

The project would prove especially demanding, since Harris wasn't content just to write a collection of songs — she wanted to tell a story, following the model set a decade earlier by Willie Nelson's country opera "Phases And Stages" by Willie Nelson.

The album was written and produced jointly by Harris and English guitarist Paul Kennerley, who at that very time decided to move from London to Nashville in order to work more closely with Harris. The two had met in 1980, when he brought her in as a guest on the country opera "The Legend Of Jesse James": Harris felt he was therefore the ideal partner to help her put one together (on top of that, their relationship gradually turned from professional to romantic).

The writing and recording stages took up the whole of 1984: the result finally saw the light of day on February 25, 1985, on Warner Bros., under the title "The Ballad Of Sally Rose" (Sally Rose was the fake name Harris used to give when on tour, to avoid being hassled).

The title track introduces the protagonist: the daughter of a white woman from South Dakota and a Sioux man, abandoned by her father at the very moment she's being born. Raised with no particular attachment to her home turf, she leaves it behind to chase her dreams:

Her mama had him hoisted down in South Minnesota

He promised her the world but it didn't last for long,

'Cause the last time he was seen was in that '59 DeSota,

When Sally was born in the Dakota Black Hills.

She was washed in the blood of the dying Sioux nation,

raised with a heart both proud and wandering,

and she knew her roots lay on that old reservation,

but she had stars in her eyes and bigger expectations.

No rings on her fingers, no bells on her toes,

with bugs on the headlights and runs in her hose,

through the valley of the shadow of Roosevelt's nose,

Adios South Dakota, adios Sally Rose,

they've got a national monument carved out of the rock,

on the side of a mountain where her ancestors used to roam,

playing cowboys and Indians right under the nose

of Theodore Roosevelt and sweet Sally Rose.

So she left Rapid City in the blue moonlight,

with her eye on the highway and her foot on the mat,

and turning the dial she was drawn to the power

of the words coming out of the transmission tower

In “Rhythm Guitar” Sally settles down in Tupelo, Mississippi, where by coincidence she ends up opening the show for a famous country singer, who asks her to join his band:

Well, she played around town until she opened the show

for a famous singer from Tupelo,

he spotted her in the lights and gave her a hand,

before she knew it Sally was one of the band.

She said: ‘Don’t give me anything I can’t use,

I’ve got the rhythm and I don’t need the blues,

I don’t want to ride any falling star,

I just want to play rhythm guitar'.

She was the sweetest thing he'd ever seen,

and he'd had plenty of girls backstage.

She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard,

playing rhythm guitar and singing harmonies.

Well, Sally keeps her feet on the ground,

she doesn't lose her head when the sun goes down,

everyone's looking for a love story,

Sally just wants to make people dance

In "I Think I Love Him", a fragment lasting just over a minute, Sally realizes she's fallen for the singer. There's room for a deluxe quotation: when he tells her "you are my flower", a violin strikes up the melody of the song of the same name recorded in 1938 by the Carter Family.

The idyll doesn't last long, however, and already in the following "Woman Walk The Line" Sally finds herself alone in a bar, waiting for her beloved to come back from one of his wild nights out:

Don't waste your time sitting at my table

just because I'm alone,

yes, I'm a woman and I'm alone,

but that doesn't mean I can't be strong.

Once again he's not beside me,

and tonight he won't be coming home,

so I need a place to feel him missing,

when he goes out to do me wrong.

Tonight I want to drink a little,

I came to hear the band,

yes, I'm as good as you're thinking,

but I don't want to hold your hand.

And I know I seem lonely,

but there's nothing here I'm looking for,

it's just what a woman does

when she goes out to keep her balance.

Every night is a little longer

than the one that came before,

but when I hear them sing a sad song

I know what I'm crying for.

I don't want to stay home waiting,

I don't want to wonder where he's been,

he'll be some other girl's boy

before he's back in my arms again

Consumed by a life of excess, the singer ends up dying in a car crash. Sally learns the news in "Bad News":

Bad news, black day,

there was an accident on the highway,

he was driving fast, dangerously,

he missed a curve and died in the dark,

he'll never know how much I've lost.

Bad news, the sirens are moaning,

he rode the devil down the white line,

with [a bottle of] Johnnie Walker by his side,

always out there chasing one last ride

The tracklist then offers two of Sally's laments for the singer, “Timberline” and “White Line”, sandwiched around “Long Tall Sally Rose”, which tells how the girl has meanwhile launched a highly successful career of her own.

With “Diamond In My Crown” Sally realizes that, despite everything she's achieved, she still hasn't come to terms with the grief of losing the person she loved:

While every long day rolls and falls behind me,

in the lonesome night there's a peace I have found,

though I'm weary even as I rise to start again,

there will be a diamond, a diamond in my crown.

I have squandered all that life put before me,

I have watched every green field turn to brown,

but I won't disown all these ties that still bind me.

One day it will shine, I feel it, brighter than all the golden roads,

when I lay down the burdens I carry,

and the sorrows I have known, I'll see them all laid down.

As the years go by, I will grow stronger,

just as surely as this old world keeps turning,

then I'll be closer to my sweetest victory

“The Sweetheart Of The Rodeo” continues in the same vein:

I hear the sound of sorrow in the wind

blowing down from every mile I've traveled,

calling me onto some road that never ends,

where the girl rides the rodeo again,

a thousand nights, a thousand towns, I've been cheered,

there's no reward left for me now,

along the highway where the west was won,

no matter how fast I drive or how far I go.

Waiting for the rodeo girl,

they're coming down from Tonopah to Tupelo,

she'll come to town to ride the radios,

as if she were sliding down the walls of Jericho,

there she goes, the rodeo girl.

I stepped into the light you left behind,

I stayed right there where the whole world could see me shine,

I was on my way to you, to make you mine,

but I took the longest road I could find

At this point it's clear that Sally needs a radical change. In "K-S-O-S" she gives up her career as a country musician, up to that point marked by a frantic touring schedule, and decides to set up a radio station. During an instrumental interlude, the guitar plays the melodies of some of the songs broadcast on it: great country classics parade by, such as "Ring Of Fire" by Johnny Cash, "Wildwood Flower" by the Carter Family and "Six Days On The Road" by Paul Davis, made a hit by Dave Dudley.

The album closes with "Sweet Chariot", with its almost apocalyptic lyrics:

My dear, I searched for you in the desert and in the sky,

only to find you and lift the mourning from my eyes,

when I lost you, I suffered and you were sanctified,

we are all born to live, we are all destined to die.

Swing down sweet chariot,

the flesh will fall and the bones will rot,

but from my sorrow you will not carry me away,

my heart is bound, my soul chained to the rock,

the rock of ages, cleft for me,

I swung my hammer at Joshua Tree,

echoed across the mountain and rolled down to the sea,

and will resound from the rock.

My children, sorrow will come for each of us,

all our trials will soon be buried in dust,

long forgotten but quick as silver to rust,

love is found when the heart is lost

The final part of the album is threaded with biblical references, lending the narrative a particularly epic tone: "The Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" evokes the walls of Jericho, whose fall is described in the "Book of Joshua" (not by chance, Sally later travels to Joshua Tree National Park, named after the Hebrew leader), while "the rock of ages" mentioned in "Sweet Chariot" is one of the names given to God in the "Book of Isaiah".

Although in the liner notes Harris states that Sally manages to work through her grief and find herself again, the particularly bleak tone of the final song raises more than one doubt on the matter.

A cinematic storyline alone, however, isn't enough to make an album: "The Ballad Of Sally Rose" excels musically as well.

Backing Harris and Kennerley are, among others, top-tier session players such as bassist Emory Gordy Jr., guitarists Albert Lee and Hank Devito, and drummers Larrie Londin and Russ Kunkel. There's also room for four country stars as special guests: Vince Gill and Waylon Jennings on guitar (the latter's timbre is clearly audible on "Rhythm Guitar"), Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt on backing vocals (the two would go on to record a joint album with Harris, "Trio", which in 1987 would prove one of the biggest successes in all three careers).

The album bears some of the production choices typical of the Eighties (most notably, the echoing drums), but this shouldn't be taken as a criticism, since the sound remains very well balanced and the arrangements carry forward the progressive country vision that has more or less defined Harris's career since 1975, rejecting easy concessions to radio-friendly pop. Although guitar, bass and drums dominate, room is made from time to time for pedal steel guitar and resonator guitar (played by Devito), mandolin (played by Lee), harmonica, accordion and banjo.

No song feels built to conquer the radio: each one instead carries the story forward, interconnected with those before and after it, and there are no breezy melodies, with the pace and tone remaining largely mournful and brooding, suited to letting the whole tracklist flow rather than to singling out any one moment.

The country rock of "Bad News", surprisingly aggressive compared to the rest of the album, might perhaps have had potential, but is instead - in a striking play of contrasts - reduced to a vignette of under two minutes that serves as the backdrop to the moment Sally learns of the singer's death, making it in fact hard to grasp without the surrounding context.

"The Ballad Of Sally Rose" stalls at number 171 on the Billboard chart, becoming Harris's lowest-selling album since 1975 up to that point. The singer feels the blow, and fifteen years would pass before she returned with another self-penned record, "Red Dirt Girl" (Nonesuch, 2000), which would instead meet with good success.

Still, there's no doubt that "The Ballad Of Sally Rose" stands as an unrepeatable moment in Harris's career: it's the work with which she proved the strength of her own songwriting, with an approach untouched by trends yet able to wed country music to the technology of its time, all while respecting its history and imagery.

The figure of Sally herself is remarkable in the various facets of her personality: despite her inner fragility, she proves capable of facing life without needing the support of a man, even though she would want it. However, her beloved would not have been able to provide it, having soon fallen victim to his own weaknesses. In Sally Rose's story there is no weaker sex and stronger sex, there is only a humanity that struggles along, facing day by day the pain caused by the harshness of the world around it, sometimes working through it, more often simply enduring it.

If it wasn't already clear enough, it's worth pointing out that Sally was conceived as a stand-in for Harris herself, just as the nameless singer represents Parsons, although the story was fictionalized: Harris saw Parsons as a mentor, but she wasn't in love with him; nevertheless, there's no doubt that creating the Sally fable may have helped her overcome her loss.

In 2018 Dolly Parton told Paste Magazine: "It's one of the best records ever made in the genre. When I hear her voice it moves me, it touches my soul. It's such an honest album. If you want to get to know Emmylou, you can do it through this album. It's her story and she's telling it, she's singing it."

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27/12/2024