“The Boxer” was written by Paul Simon and released as a Simon & Garfunkel single in April 1969, reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100; it appeared on Bridge Over Troubled Water the following year. Simon wrote the song during a period of estrangement from Art Garfunkel, partly in response to critical commentary about his work. The narrator — a poor boy who has come to New York and taken his share of blows as a boxer — carries the evidence in scars, the famous “lie-la-lie” refrain expressing something beyond the lyric’s reach.
Emmylou Harris recorded it for Roses in the Snow (Warner Bros., 1980), produced by Brian Ahern and recorded in part using Ahern’s Enactron Truck mobile studio. The ensemble — Ricky Skaggs, Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas, Albert Lee, Bryan Bowers on autoharp — gave the song a Celtic and Appalachian texture that suited its ballad structure naturally. The “lie-la-lie” refrain worked well in a close-harmony setting, and Harris’s single reached #13 on the country chart.
The inclusion of a Paul Simon song on an album otherwise drawn from Appalachian folk and bluegrass material was a deliberate statement: Roses in the Snow was defined by its sound and instrumentation rather than its repertoire. Harris and Ahern’s argument was that their acoustic ensemble could make any song belong in the same tradition as Flatt & Scruggs and the Carter Family. The Simon selection was the most visible test of that proposition, and the recording became one of the most played tracks on the album.
