Emmylou Harris

She was born on 2 April 1947 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her father was a Marine Corps officer, and the family lived in North Carolina before settling at Woodbridge, Virginia, where she played saxophone in the high-school marching band. Her grandfather gave her her first guitar, and she taught herself to play and sing along with the folk music on WAMU radio; Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger were early influences. In 1965 she went to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro on a drama scholarship, formed a folk duo called the Emerald City, and played coffeehouses on her own. She left in 1967 to sing full-time, working the clubs of Greenwich Village, and in 1970 Jubilee Records issued her first album, Gliding Bird, under the name Emmy Lou Harris.

Back near Washington, D.C., she built a following in clubs such as Clyde’s and the Cellar Door. In 1971 members of the Flying Burrito Brothers heard her sing there, and Gram Parsons, then starting a solo career, came to hear her. In September and October 1972 she sang harmony on his first album, GP, in Los Angeles, and in 1973 she toured in his band, the Fallen Angels, and recorded Grievous Angel with him. Parsons introduced her to the music of the Louvin Brothers, Bill Monroe and George Jones. He died weeks after the Grievous Angel sessions, and the album came out in 1974.

Harris formed her own band and played weekly at the Red Fox Inn in Bethesda, Maryland, while Warner Bros. paired her with the producer Brian Ahern, who made her records for the next eight years. Pieces of the Sky (Reprise, 1975) included her own “Boulder to Birmingham” and the hit “If I Could Only Win Your Love.” For Elite Hotel, released at the end of 1975, she formed the Hot Band with James Burton and Glen D. Hardin from Elvis Presley’s TCB Band and Rodney Crowell; its versions of Buck Owens’s “Together Again” and Don Gibson’s “Sweet Dreams” went to number one, and it won her the Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Luxury Liner and Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town (1978) followed, with number ones including “Making Believe,” “To Daddy” and “Two More Bottles of Wine.” Her early hits drew on songs made famous by the Louvin Brothers, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Kitty Wells, while introducing writers such as Crowell and Jesse Winchester.

Turning down Warner’s push toward country-pop, she made two traditional records. Blue Kentucky Girl (1979) won her a second Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. For Roses in the Snow (1980) she took up the acoustic and bluegrass sound that Ricky Skaggs, who had replaced Crowell in the Hot Band, brought with him; Skaggs played guitar, banjo, fiddle and mandolin and sang duets, Tony Rice played guitar, Jerry Douglas dobro and Emory Gordy Jr. bass, and Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Willie Nelson and the Whites sang. The songs included “Wayfaring Stranger,” Ralph Stanley’s “Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn,” the Louvin Brothers’ “You’re Learning,” the Carter Family’s “Gold Watch and Chain” and Paul Simon’s “The Boxer.” “Wayfaring Stranger” reached number seven and “The Boxer” number thirteen, the album went gold, and the Country Music Association named her Female Vocalist of the Year in 1980. Her duet with Roy Orbison, “That Lovin’ You Feeling Again,” won another Grammy.

When Skaggs left around 1981 she rebuilt the Hot Band for Cimarron (1981) and the live Last Date (1982), whose title song went to number one. In 1983 she moved to Nashville. The Ballad of Sally Rose (1985), written with Paul Kennerley, was her first album of mostly her own songs. Angel Band (1987) was a gospel album recorded live in the studio with Vince Gill on mandolin, Carl Jackson on guitar and Emory Gordy Jr. on bass, with Jerry Douglas and Mark O’Connor added on some tracks. The same year she, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt released Trio, the best-selling album of her career, which reached number one on the country chart and won a Grammy; it included Alan O’Bryant’s “Those Memories of You.” The three followed it with Trio II (1999), whose “After the Gold Rush” won another Grammy.

In 1990 she replaced the Hot Band with an acoustic group, the Nash Ramblers: Sam Bush on fiddle and mandolin, Al Perkins on banjo, guitar and resonator guitar, Jon Randall Stewart on guitar and mandolin, Roy Huskey Jr. on bass and Larry Atamanuik on drums. Over three nights in 1991 they recorded a live album before small audiences at the Ryman Auditorium, the old home of the Grand Ole Opry, which was then standing empty. At the Ryman came out in January 1992, days before she became an Opry member, and won the Grammy for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal; the attention it drew helped bring about the building’s restoration, and it reopened as a concert hall in 1994. A 1990 concert by the same band was issued in 2021 as Ramble in Music City: The Lost Concert.

With Wrecking Ball (Asylum, 1995), produced by Daniel Lanois, she turned to a darker, rock-tinged sound; it won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, as did Red Dirt Girl (Nonesuch, 2000), a record of mostly her own songs. She sang on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack (2000), made Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions (1999) with Ronstadt and All the Roadrunning (2006) with Mark Knopfler, and recorded two duet albums with Rodney Crowell, Old Yellow Moon (2013), which won a Grammy, and The Traveling Kind (2015). In October 2025 the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco honored her as the only artist to have played every edition since it began in 2001, and a few days later she entered the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

• 1980: Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year
• 1992: Member of the Grand Ole Opry
• 1999: Billboard Century Award
• 2003: Alabama Music Hall of Fame
• 2008: Country Music Hall of Fame
• 2015: Polar Music Prize
• 2018: Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2025: Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame