When I was a senior in high school, I wrote an entertainment column for my high school newspaper. I wrote about many topics — movies, music, books, TV — much as I do today in this blog.
Occasionally, I have gone back and read some of my clippings from that period in my life. And there are times when I am, frankly, impressed. I was more insightful than I remember being at that age, I have told myself.
But, if I am to be honest, there were far more instances when my youth, my naivete, my inexperience were on full display. I was too young — and so, too, were most of my readers — to realize it, but, unless my teachers were not as sharp as I gave them credit for being, some of them must have seen it.
Perhaps they were just being kind or polite by not pointing out to me that I was full of it — or maybe they had just spent so many years trying to educate the younger generation that they instinctively realized it was a phase through which everyone must pass and trying to spare anyone that experience is a mountain too high.
Anyway, I have grown and matured, as people tend to do, but I still remember the frequent urging from Paula, my high school editor, to write about one of her favorite singers, Emmylou Harris.
It was a request I finally granted that spring about a month or so before graduation.
I wrote about Emmylou's then–current release, "Quarter Moon in a Ten–Cent Town," a good album but Paula, a singer and guitar player who has gone on to run her own music store in our hometown, cut her musical teeth on Emmylou's earlier efforts.
Paula knew that "Quarter Moon" was only Emmylou's latest recording — not her best.
Unfortunately, I did not discover those earlier works until after I finished high school and I was dealing with a painful breakup with the girl I loved.
In the interest of accuracy, that girl was not Paula — although I must confess there was a time in my life when I did have something of a crush on her (and, based on the recent photos I've seen of her, she is still striking).
Nevertheless, I can see now, as I did then, quite a resemblance between Paula and Emmylou. Both were talented and beautiful, with the same long, dark hair parted in the middle.
When Paula held a guitar, she looked like Emmylou. And when she sang, she sounded like Emmylou.
Well, to me, she did.
It wasn't hard for me to see a younger Paula emulating Emmylou as she learned to sing and play the guitar. From what I had seen of Paula performing, she had the same mannerisms, the same stage presence, even the same vocal range. Emmylou's style — a mixture of earthiness, poignance and melancholy — was Paula's style, too.
Under the circumstances, Emmylou provided the kind of soothing music I craved, even though I had not grown up on country music. And, to be accurate, Emmylou and Paula both seemed to favor music that was more folk, more bluegrass than country, and I was always comfortable with that.
She seemed to burst through barriers with her covers of tunes like Lennon–McCartney's "Here, There and Everywhere" that was included on Harris' "Elite Hotel" album, which was released 35 years ago today.
I guess "Elite Hotel" came to be my favorite of her records when I was in college. I acquired it with a few others by Harris at that time in my life.
I never replaced them with CD versions — guess I'll have to get around to doing that one of these days — but I still admire them.
Harris has released a lot of albums in the years since I was in college. I haven't listened to many of them; occasionally, she may have risen to the same level she reached on "Elite Hotel." I don't know.
I do know that her music has taken her many places, including the Country Music Hall of Fame.
She, like Paula, is a gifted singer. She had a sort of steel–belted delicacy about her that I always found enormously appealing. Apparently, so did many others.
But if she has matched — or even exceeded — what she did on "Elite Hotel," she must have done so rarely. It was too good, and habitually duplicating it would be like hitting an ever smaller target from an ever greater distance — not necessarily impossible, just very improbable.
Her recordings in those days were diverse collections. On the same album with Lennon–McCartney tunes could be found Harris' homages to Hank Williams Sr., Gram Parsons, Buck Owens, Patsy Cline, Don Gibson, Rodney Crowell.
Much the same could be said of her debut album from earlier that year, "Pieces of the Sky," which did quite well, but "Elite Hotel" really built on its success and became Harris' first #1 country album.
And it gave her her first #1 country songs, "Together Again" and "Sweet Dreams."
But it was a crossover success as well. Not only country listeners were aware of Harris' talent. Other audiences were listening to her as well.
I, for one, didn't think of it as country, although it clearly had country influences and represented a departure from the kind of music I had been listening to. Until I started listening to Emmylou Harris in my early college days, the extent of my country music knowledge tended to be Hank Williams Sr., Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and, OK, a little Kenny Rogers.
I wished I had known in high school what I discovered in college about Emmylou Harris. In a way, I felt like I had missed so much.
But I guess I didn't. Not really. I did get to hear Paula.
