How one “goddess” woman inspired Emmylou Harris’ entire career
As a woman working in music, there’s nothing I love more than stories of other women in music hyping each other up. The sad fact is that this industry has always and forever been a boys club. In every genre, there is a disparity, and the women never quite get celebrated as loudly as their male peers.
Luckily, Emmylou Harris has always been willing to scream her praise.
There are bound to be people to argue back with the above statement, but it’s a fact. Women are underrepresented from top to bottom, from the record label offices to local venues. Even in genres or styles where there are more women than men, like in the pop world, for example, misogyny shows up in many insidious ways, in comments about women’s appearances, in impossible standards they must meet, in the endless demands placed on them that their male counterparts never have to face.
“Always an angel, never a god,” Boygenius sang, summing it up perfectly as iconic female artists are celebrated, but are so rarely put on the god-tier or given the scale of respect they deserve for their contributions.
Emmylou Harris certainly faces that. As a cornerstone of the Greenwich music scene, and then as a muse to Gram Parsons, her staggeringly beautiful voice earned her powerful fans. She became a key player bridging the gaps between folk, rock and country, and defying expectations to stay in that unique lane. When her label might have liked her to fit more neatly into a country-pop box, and to dress her up like an easy-to-sell cowgirl, she stuck to her guns and released Blue Kentucky Girl, leaning even further into traditional sounds.
It’s no wonder then that her hero is another figure that has always and forever followed her own voice only, and is another woman left underappreciated in male shadows.
“She is the reason I picked up the guitar, and I think I speak for a lot of other girls my age,” Harris said, with the artist in question being Joan Baez. After first hearing Baez, she was absolutely awe-struck not only by the singer’s angelic voice, but by the passionate messages of protest and justice in her lyrics.
She was so inspired that it led her to take her own first steps. “I went to New York and tried to be Joan Baez,” Harris said as she quit her college career and went off to embed herself in the same Greenwich scene that brought Baez up. Yet despite Baez’s essential impact, not just on Harris, but on that entire circle of musicians and beyond, she was left caught in the shadows of Bob Dylan – a man who at first was merely another name in Baez’s hoards of devotees.
For Harris, though, Baez has always been number one. “I worshipped her. Still do in a way because she just changed my whole focus on music,” she said as no small praise,” adding, “She’s an iconic artist who changed music and the heart of America by giving voice to the civil rights movement.”
Years down the line, Harris and Baez were peers. They graced the stage together once at a fundraising event as a time when Harris had now made her own name. But still, singing with her idol made her knees weak, stating, “We were considered compatriots of the stage.”
That wasn’t her experience as she was utterly starstruck, adding, “I still had a goddess complex about Joan.”
