Having come to prominence adding luscious harmony vocals to two albums made by former Byrd, also ex-Flying Burrito Brother Gram Parsons, it was hardly a surprise when Emmylou Harris was offered a recording contract in her own right. That said, the start of her solo career could not have arisen in more unfortunate circumstances.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama (2/4/1947), as a child Harris moved with her family to Washington, developing an interest in country music as a teenager. On learning to play guitar, she began playing a folk circuit that extended to New York but after five years spent performing in bars and clubs, all Harris, already marked out as as an emotive vocalist, had to show for her efforts was a minor label L.P. release, (the ‘Gliding Bird‘ set of 1969 disappearing without trace), a broken marriage and newly-born daughter.
On settling back in Washington to consider her options, while playing a local date in the summer of 1972 she was chanced upon by Chris Hillman, by now a member of Stephen Stills’ Manassas ensemble. He immediately put her in touch with his erstwhile Byrd/Burrito bandmate Parsons, who had made known his intention to record a country album featuring prominent female harmonies.
While failing to make any chart headway, the ensuing ‘GP‘ album (January 1973) showed they were a well-matched pair, Harris blessed with the range to bolster Parsons’ expressive, if fragile, tenor. As she had such a presence, on what was a generally impressive album, it made sense for Harris to be enlisted into band known as ‘The Fallen Angels’, who backed Parsons when he toured to support the record – their partnership deemed so successful that when the tour was over, new material was soon being recorded for a follow-up.
Sadly Parsons, an original talent and true country-rock pioneer, was prone to self-destructive ways and on September 19 1973 at the age of just 26, succumbed to an overdose of morphine and alcohol, dying at the Joshua Tree motel close to the national park of the same name, 130 miles east of Los Angeles.
The sadness was compounded in January 1974 when the posthumous ‘Grievous Angel‘ album appeared, containing the tracks that had been cut just prior to his death. This altogether excellent offering, with Harris again to the fore, made good on the potential evident on ‘GP‘ while confirming an authentic genius had been lost.
To assuage her grief Harris undertook background vocal duties for known admirers such as Linda Ronstadt and Little Feat – this avenue of work eventually leading to a gig singing harmony on the 1976 Bob Dylan ‘Desire.‘
By then she had signed a deal with Reprise Records for whom Harris cut the auspicious January 1975 debut set ‘Pieces of the Sky‘ followed by the equally-assured ‘Elite Hotel‘ later the same year.
Her reputation was further enhanced by the top-notch backing troupe, dubbed The Hot Band, who supported Harris in concert and on record – James Burton (guitar), Glen D. Hardin (piano), Hank De Vito (pedal steel), Emory Gordy (bass), and John Ware (drums) – Burton and Hardin having worked not only with Parsons, but with Elvis Presley in his revered TCB (Taking Care of Business) group. The Hot Band performed main backing assistance on her well-received ‘Luxury Liner‘ release (1977), the support cast also including singer-songwriter-guitarist Rodney Crowell and English guitar ace Albert Lee, whose role was made permanent when Burton left to reunite with Presley.
Through this trio of fine albums, each one attaining high placings on the Billboard County Music Charts, Harris had displayed her skill at purveying country music with gentle pop overtones, while at the same time enhancing Parsons’ legacy with affectionate readings of two of his songs.
While no Parsons compositions feature on ‘QUARTER MOON IN A TEN CENT TOWN‘ (January 1978) it stands as full-ripening of the fruit on her first three records. With Brian Ahern (who Harris had married the previous year) once more assigned production responsibility, she serves up another top quality release offering authentic country flavour – her arrival in the pantheon of preeminent performers emphasised by a duet with Willie Nelson on side two cut ‘One Paper Kid‘.
Demonstrating from the off her sure touch as a skilled interpreter, opening track, the mournful ‘Easy From Now On‘ (written by Susanah Clark and Carlene Carter), also contains the line that gives the record its title.
With the pedal steel of De Vito and atmospheric harmonica work from Mickey Raphael providing the most pronounced accompaniment, Harris delivers a vocal full of emotional resonance in portraying a woman wronged by a fickle man:
‘There he goes gone again/Same old story’s gotta come to an end/Lovin’ him was a one way street/But I’m gettin’ off where the crossroads meet/It’s a quarter moon in a ten cent town/Time for me to lay my heartaches down.’
Climbing to Number 12 on the Country charts when released as a single – co-writer Clark also produced the painting for the album cover – ‘Easy From Now On‘ is the first of three ballads included on side one. Of the others there is a tender reading of ‘To Daddy‘, this moving Dolly Parton song depicting a husband/wife relationship from the perspective of one of their daughters – Dolly deftly using the title to end each line of the lyric, (‘And she never missed the flowers and the cards he never sent her/If she did she never did say so to daddy‘), the wife drawn as a taken-for-granted, put upon figure.
Harris nurtures all the lyrical nuances as the piece moves toward its fatalistic conclusion, expressing vivid sensitivity just as she had done three years earlier with Parton’s ‘Coat of Many Colours‘ on ‘Pieces of the Sky.’
The first of two covers from the catalogue of Louisiana-born singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester, ‘My Songbird‘ features the ringing mandolin of Lee, Harris producing a vocal of great delicacy for an equally delicate lyric conveying the sad realisation a relationship is over, ‘My songbird wants her freedom/Now don’t you think I know/But I can’t find it in myself/To let my songbird go.’
Bringing a change of pace to side one is a sprightly run through of ‘Two More Bottles of Wine‘, Harris and the Hot Band turning this engaging Delbert McClinton piece into a mid-paced rock track Bob Seger would be proud of.
The central character has been left high and dry by a lover in Los Angeles after they had fled there to pursue dreams, (‘We came out west together with a common desire/The fever we had might-a set the west coast on fire‘). But with Lee providing the guitar twang and Hardin some honky-tonk piano breaks, the narrator is found in reduced circumstances with only alcohol for solace:
‘I’m sixteen hundred miles from the people I know/Been doin’ all I can but opportunity sure come slow/Lord I’d be in the sun all day/But I’m sweepin’ out a warehouse in west L.A./But it’s all right ’cause it’s midnight/And I got two more bottles of wine.’
Side one closer ‘Leaving Louisiana in the Morning Light‘, (written by band member Crowell and Donivan Cowart), throws some country-swing into the mix. With Garth Hudson (accordion) and Rick Danko (fiddle/background vocals) in attendance, it immediately evokes ‘Evangeline‘, the sublime Robbie Robertson song she cut with The Band for their career culmination documentary/final concert project ‘The Last Waltz’.
Like ‘Two More Bottles of Wine‘ the song relates to a figure eager to explore a life more exciting than the one at hand, (‘Mary took to running with a travelin’ man/Left her momma crying with her head in her hands‘). The players – with Band buddies Hudson and Danko at the sharp end – are clearly enjoying the performance as Harris sings with cheery resignation in bringing this bittersweet tale to a conclusion, ‘Leaving Louisiana in the broad daylight/It’s just an ordinary story ’bout the way things go/Round and around nobody knows/But the highway goes on forever.’
As songwriters Winchester and Crowell are back in the spotlight with the opening of side two, Harris receiving vocal support from Nicolette Larson on a song by the former entitled ‘Defying Gravity‘ – a wistful, melancholy piece contemplating the mystery of dreams.
From Crowell she takes the far more upbeat ‘I Ain’t Living Long Like This‘, an incident-filled story of a wayward son born to an errant father, (‘Dad drove a stock car to an early death/All I remember was a drunk man’s breath’). The electric guitars of Lee and Crowell play effectively against each other as the tale races along, (‘He slipped the handcuffs on behind my back/Then he left me freezing on a steel rail track‘).
The country outlaw connotations of this fine song ensured it would come to the attention of mercurial figures such as Waylon Jennings further down the line, rockabilly rebel Gary Stanley having cut a version 12 months before Harris set her mind to it.
Stripped back to a line-up of just Raphael (harmonica), Harris (acoustic guitar) and Nelson (duet vocals), ‘One Paper Kid‘ (a Walter Martin Cowart composition) is a disconsolate affair based on a childhood friend who grows up to be killed by someone driving (‘Driver was drunk or he just didn’t see‘), whilst under the influence.
The title alludes to being able to roll tobacco inside one cigarette paper, this knack mastered by whom the song is based upon. The respective enchanting and earthy tones of the two singers do full justice to a piece (‘Hell that one paper kid wasn’t really so mean/Just a little bit weird cause times were so lean/Now he’s gone to a place where it’s legal to dream‘), containing several poignant lines.
Standing out as the purest country song of the collection, Harris comes up with an affecting rendition of ‘Green Rolling Hills‘, a homesick lament written by folk singer/poet Utah Phillips.
The scenery in question has been left behind in West Virginia, (‘Someday I’ll go back/To the green rolling hills I love so well’), the nostalgic yearning accentuated by sympathetic pedal steel inflections and splendid turn from Ricky Skaggs on fiddle and viola – Harris never more expressive than when delivering the despondent lines:
‘In some northern factory town you’ll find me here/Though I’ll leave the past behind/I’ll never change my mind/These trouble times are more than I can bear/But someday I’ll go back to West Virginia.’
In bringing the record to a charming conclusion, Harris and the Hot Band, supplemented by Hudson (baritone sax) along with the harmonies of Larson and Dianne Brooks, give ‘Burn That Candle‘ country waltz treatment. Written by Winfield Scott, whose other credits included the Elvis hit ‘Return to Sender‘, the longest track on the album at almost four and half minutes is testament to the exuberance a group of musicians and singers in a room can create – although it is just as easy to imagine them sitting around a campfire, singing and playing to their hearts’ content.
Released to widespread acclaim and the commercial success of reaching number three on the Billboard Country charts, ‘Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town’ also gave Harris a further foothold in the mainstream marketplace, affirming as it did her gift for selecting high calibre material while working with exemplary collaborators.
Not yet having made a concerted effort at songwriting herself (that would come on her excellent 1985 release ‘The Ballad of Sally Rose‘), in 1978 Harris was by now established as vocalist par excellence, capable of creating clearly defined work on her own career path and for the continuing road of country music.
Gram Parsons would certainly have approved.
EMMYLOU HARRIS – QUARTER MOON IN A TEN CENT TOWN (Released January 2 1978):
Easy From Now On/Two More Bottles of Wine/To Daddy/My Songbird/Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight/Defying Gravity/I Ain’t Living Long Like This/One Paper Kid/Green Rolling Hills/Burn That Candle;
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