Released fifty years ago this week, ‘Pieces of the Sky’ is the album that launched Emmylou Harris’s career. She has often referred to it as her ‘debut’, attempting to gloss over her first failed release ‘Gliding Bird’.
After that album bombed she gave birth to her first child, got divorced and eventually moved back home to live with her parents. Still the musical flame that burned inside of her refused to die. She was back playing clubs six nights a week around Washington when one evening some of the Flying Burrito Brothers walked in and heard her singing Kitty Wells’s ‘It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels’. Later Chris Hillman suggested her when his ex-bandleader Gram Parsons said he was looking for a ‘girl singer’ to join his band – he couldn’t remember her name but luckily someone did and soon Emmy was on the road with Gram.
Gram Parsons influence on Emmylou’s career is a story that has long been spun elsewhere if you want to hear it. While Emmylou will obviously always be connected to Gram’s mythology, the idea that she wouldn’t have been a success without him is frankly ridiculous. Her vocal talent was always going to be noticed by someone.
What Gram did was guide her towards the sound that would set her apart – helping her to combine her folk music voice with a deep love of country music songwriting, mixed with the echo of romantic rock and roll tragedy.
Gram also gave her access to a manager and a record label who wanted to capitalise on his legacy after his untimely death. Emmylou was signed by Mary Martin at Reprise Warner, Gram’s label, who set her up with producer (and future second husband) Brian Ahern.
‘I just hit my stride,’ she sings on the opening song ‘Bluebird Wine’ and that summed up how much she had evolved since the faltering falsettos of her Gliding Bird era. She now had a great country rock band, her voice was set free from the chokehold of folk music and she just sounds like she’s actually having a fantastic time just getting drunk and playing music. Emmylou has said of this song: ‘To me, Bluebird Wine represents joy. It’s the elixir, it’s about drinking from the fountain of youth.”
This song also begins another of her most fruitful musical collaborations with then unknown songwriter Rodney Crowell. His song had been on a tape of potential tracks played to her by Ahern, who had just signed Crowell as a songwriter and hadn’t even heard the track himself before playing it to Emmylou. As she once said, the rest is history.
After the mediocre results of her own songwriting on her debut, Emmylou embraces her role as an interpreter and arranger of other people’s songs. ‘I don’t pick the guitar but I’m a song picker’ might have been a self-deprecating quip but it shows she understood that the ability to choose the right song made her career. What also helped her was the funding from the record company to work with some of the best musicians in the business, so good they would be known as ‘The Hot Band’.
‘Too Far Gone’ is the most bittersweet, beautiful ballad by Billy Sherrill which had previously been recorded by an array of the biggest country music stars including Tammy Wynette, Waylon Jennings and Dottie West. Emmylou wasn’t sure she sang it well but by choosing it she helped establish herself as an authentic country singer and it eventually charted in the genre.
A cover of the Louvin Brothers’s ‘If I Could Only Win Your Love’ became her first true country hit, reaching number 4 in the charts, and its lovely tone and harmonies with Herb Pedersen really set it apart. There’s a romantic longing here in her voice which always appeals to the listener, especially in country music.
For the whole of ‘Gliding Bird’ Emmylou attempted to write a song in the style of Joni Mitchell, coming up short each time. On ‘Boulder to Birmingham’ she achieves her wish, writing the best song of her career, an all-timer, one of those that will linger long after she’s gone. For an artist who has often downplayed her own writing talent, here’s a song of emotional depth that transcends time.
Emmylou said of the song, inspired by Gram’s death: ‘Words can be so powerful to help you express something you otherwise can’t. And everyone has experienced loss, so even though the song is deeply personal, I can understand how people can relate to it, having lost someone who is very close to them.’ For me the line that always stands out as summing up the pain of grief is: ‘The hardest part is knowing I’ll survive.’
Other artists also connected with the song with versions recorded soon after by The Hollies, Scott Walker and Dolly Parton on her All I Can Do album. Emmylou’s hero Joan Baez would also cover the song live, which must have been a thrill for her.
‘Before Believing’ goes back to those folk songs of her debut, sounding very like Baez and this time she’s able to hit the right notes and find the nuances. The song was written by Danny Flowers who would go on to write ‘Tulsa Time’ and ‘Gulf Coast Highway’. The title of the album comes from a line in the song about ‘pieces of the sky falling in your yard/ but not on you’.
‘The Bottle Let Me Down’ is one of many drinking songs that Emmylou would sing in her career, combining bittersweet heartbreak with classic country twang on this Merle Haggard classic.
‘Sleepless Nights’ was a song that Emmylou had once sung with Gram, written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant who also penned ‘Love Hurts’. This solo version takes on a new kind of poignancy after his death, her heartbroken emotions echoed by the haunting pedal steel. While Emmylou claims they were never romantically involved, by singing all these songs of longing and heartbreak she kept the mystery of their relationship intriguing listeners decades later.
The appearance of Dolly Parton on this album is no surprise – Emmylou had always admired her and by singing ‘Coat of Many Colors’ she began another important musical relationship in her life. Emmylou’s version is full of tender beauty and empathy, walking in Dolly’s shoes with quiet grace and respect. Emmylou had never lived a life of poverty but by singing this song she showed a willingness to embrace those who had, and an understanding of the emotional depth of country music storytelling itself.
We then have a gorgeous version of ‘For No One’, McCartney’s classic breakup song from ‘Revolver’. By covering the Beatles, Emmylou opens the door just enough to rock and roll to allow those fans who might be somewhat wary of country music to step inside.
‘Queen of the Silver Dollar’ feels like the right way to finish the record – it was originally a Dr Hook song written by Shel Silverstein but Emmylou’s version takes us straight to the honky tonks with her friend Linda Ronstadt on harmony. The song’s story of a woman ascending to her throne could have been written just for her. Some would say Gram had ‘made a queen of a simple country girl’ but she would rule her kingdom long after he was gone.
‘Pieces of the Sky’ reached number 7 on the Country Album charts and, while not her most commercially successful album of the 70s, it has since been featured in illustrious lists like Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Country Albums of All Time and is one of the chosen ‘1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die’, showing the importance of this album to her legacy.
Now, fifty years after it was first released, it still sounds as wonderful as ever. Emmylou Harris had found her voice and was on her way to becoming a country music legend in her own right.
Highway Queens 
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