The first five albums Emmylou Harris made for Warner Bros launched the former high-school beauty queen as a figurehead of a new kind of country music, mixing an informed traditionalism with a free-ranging imaginative scope.
Her deceased mentor, Gram Parsons, would surely have been proud. Remarkably, she scored eight consecutive million-sellers, and this bunch showcases Emmy's inherent strengths: her clean, pure voice, impeccable choice of material and gift for picking the right musicians (for instance, guitarists James Burton and Albert Lee, pianist Glen D Hardin, talented Texan Rodney Crowell and loads more).
There are many brilliant songs, from her own Boulder to Birmingham to Don Gibson's Sweet Dreams - though if one were to identify a flaw, it might be a certain sameness of tone. But her recent career revival has proved that she has always been a woman of many facets and hidden depths.
