The famous band Emmylou Harris recruited for her solo debut
When a 28-year-old Emmylou Harris released her first proper solo country album Pieces of the Sky in 1975, she certainly didn’t sound like an unseasoned newcomer, nor should she have. This impressive “debut” was a hard-earned success following five rollercoaster years of fits, starts, unexpected highs, and devastating lows.
Back in 1970, Harris had recorded a folk album called Gilding Bird on a small label called Jubilee. By the time the vinyl had been pressed, though, Jubilee had already gone belly up, dooming Harris’s record to complete obscurity. Emmylou would later call this a blessing in disguise, noting that she didn’t care for the record anyway; nonetheless, it was a major setback. Flash forward a year later, and along came another brush with fate.
“I was playing in Washington, DC, in 1971,” she later recalled to the Houston Chronicle, and the Flying Burrito Brothers were playing down the street. Rick Roberts came in and ‘discovered me’,” she said, throwing up sarcastic finger quotes around the expression.
Roberts introduced Emmylou to the rest of the Burrito Brothers, and they decided to invite her to join their band, throwing open the barn door to another potential big career break. Unfortunately, the Flying Burrito Brothers were considerably less enthusiastic about each other than they were about Harris, and the band broke up a week later, before Emmylou ever sang a note with them.
The silver lining, of course, was that ex-Burrito Brother Gram Parsons did convince Harris to collaborate with him, leading to two classic albums: 1973’s GP and 1974’s Grievous Angel, both of which would go on to influential cult status as alt-country standard-bearers. Parsons’ death from a drug overdose, aged 26, put a stunning end to that partnership too, however, and Harris was suddenly on her own again, snake-bit and wondering where to turn.
Her work with Parsons had elevated her profile at least a little bit, and Gram’s label, Reprise, was willing to invest in Harris as a solo country artist. The important thing was to gather some reliable musicians to record with her; some old pros fit for a king.
“Basically, we got all the tracks done in one week of recording,” Harris said shortly after Pieces of the Sky came out in 1975, adding, “The basic tracks are with Elvis [Presley]s’ band: James Burton on guitar, Ronnie Tutt on drums and Glen D Hardin on piano. They’re just so good and have so much feeling that we didn’t really have to add hardly anything to what they did.”
Burton had been Elvis’ guitarist for six years, and Tutt and Hardin had been part of ‘The King’s’ touring band. These were quite the high-profile guns for hire, but Emmylou never felt intimidated or out of step with them. During the recording sessions inside a house in Hollywood’s Cold Water Canyon, Harris said that Burton and Hardin would often stay afterwards and hang out: “They would sit around the fire till four or five in the morning doin’ old Louvin Brothers songs and old George Jones tunes. We’d just have a little party every night. I think that’s where the feeling of the album came from.”
While Pieces of the Sky was a fairly modest commercial success, Harris had finally established a firm foundation for her career, and within a few years, she’d be among the most celebrated country singers in the world.
