Angel Band cover

Angel Band

Emmylou Harris

Album · 1987 · Warner Bros. 9 25585-1

Warner Bros. released Emmylou Harris’s Angel Band on 7 July 1987. Harris and Emory Gordy Jr. produced it. It is an acoustic gospel album, recorded with the band playing together in the studio; Jerry Douglas’s dobro and Mark O’Connor’s fiddle were added to some tracks afterward. Vince Gill plays guitar and mandolin and sings tenor, Carl Jackson plays lead acoustic guitar and sings baritone, and Gordy plays bass and sings bass vocals; Mike Auldridge is credited on dobro along with Douglas. The Country Music Foundation’s Ronnie Pugh is credited for musical research. The record earned Harris a Grammy nomination for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.

Six of the twelve songs are traditional hymns that Harris arranged: “Angel Band,” “If I Be Lifted Up,” “Precious Memories,” “Bright Morning Stars,” “We Shall Rise” and “Drifting Too Far.” “When They Ring Those Golden Bells” is also traditional, arranged by Gordy and Patty Loveless. The others are J. B. Coats’s “Where Could I Go but to the Lord,” “Who Will Sing for Me” by Carter and Ralph Stanley, and three others: Paul Kennerley’s “When He Calls,” Allen Reynolds’s “Someday My Ship Will Sail” and Alan O’Bryant’s “The Other Side of Life.”

Tracklist

  1. 1 Where Could I Go but to the Lord 3:34
  2. 2 Angel Band alt version 3:03
  3. 3 If I Be Lifted Up alt version 2:46
  4. 4 Precious Memories Source Recording J.B.F. Wright · key E · 63 bpm 4:32
  5. 5 Bright Morning Stars alt version 2:36
  6. 6 When He Calls 2:44
  7. 7 We Shall Rise 2:14
  8. 8 Drifting Too Far alt version 4:49
  9. 9 Who Will Sing for Me alt version 2:34
  10. 10 Someday My Ship Will Sail 2:28
  11. 11 The Other Side of Life 2:36
  12. 12 When They Ring Those Golden Bells Source Recording Dion de Marbelle · key C · 53 bpm 3:11

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