In the clip above she sings her song "Red Dirt Girl" at the 2005 Farm Aid Concert in Tinley Park, Illinois. She was accompanied on guitar and harmony vocals by Buddy Miller, whom I'm delighted to see was wearing a t-shirt promoting the Texas gubernatorial run of my now late Lion's Head drinking companion Kinky Friedman.
I first became aware of Emmylou Harris as the harmony vocalist on Gram Parsons' solo albums GP and the posthumously released Grievous Angel, on which Linda Ronstadt joins Emmylou on harmony on the track "In My Hour Of Darkness". On the cut "We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning", on GP, Emmylou got a turn as lead vocalist on one verse.
Sometime in 1976 I got my first Emmylou Harris album, her third to be released, Elite Hotel. It includes three Gram Parsons songs done beautifully: "Sin City", "Ooh Las Vegas", and "Wheels". The cut that moved me most, though, was her version of Rodney Crowell's heart tugging "Till I Gain Control Again", on which Linda Ronstadt does harmony, along with Jonathan Edwards and Fayssoux Starling.
Elite Hotel confirmed me as a fan of Emmylou in her own right, and I continued to collect her albums. I saw her in live performance once, at the short lived Lone Star Cafe outpost in Midtown. Happy birthday, Emmylou; thank you for all the enjoyment you've given me over fifty plus years. May you continue to enchant.
