Emmylou Plus One

A voice in search of a mate

Earlier this week, behind the paywall, I wrote about the loss of a friend. I agonised about the paywall, but in the end I decided I couldn’t bear to send it out to people who would mostly ignore it when it appeared in their inbox. He deserved more than that.

One of the many, many things I will miss is singing with him: he taught me that singing with someone is not embarrassing or soppy or hippy. Some of the songs we sung were country-inflected; we did a pretty average ‘Sin City’ (average being the best we could hope for.) So harmony has been on my mind the last couple of days, the beauty of it, the attainable impossibility of it. And Emmylou Harris has been providing harmony for her whole career.

Many of you will know that she sung most piercingly with Gram Parsons, the country-rock genius who died of a drug overdose in 1973. He wasn’t quite 27, but he belongs in the club. There was apparently no romantic relationship between Parsons and Harris, but you only have to listen to the music they made together to understand that there was intense feeling. It is impossible to listen to their recordings without hearing the whole sad story, the story they didn’t yet know when they were singing together.

Gram introduced Emmylou to country music. She said once in an interview that she hadn’t previously been mature enough to appreciate it, and she had thought of herself as a Baez-y folk singer. Ever since Gram died she has sung harmony with a lot of people, as if she were the ghost, not him, haunting recording studios across America, her voice looking for its mate. Here is a playlist of some of my favourite Emmylou duets, with Gram and with others. ‘Anyhow I Love You’ is one of my favourite love songs, and that close harmony kills me. Please tell me any I might have missed.