The Very Best of Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways (CD - 2005)

Personnel: Emmylou Harris (vocals, acoustic guitar); Emmylou Harris; Buddy Miller (vocals, electric guitar, 12-string guitar); Darryl Johnson (vocals, bass guitar, djembe, percussion); Rev. Brady Blade (vocals, drums, percussion); Barry Tashian (vocals); Tony Hall (guitar, drums); Rodney Crowell (guitar, background vocals); Frank Reckard (guitar); Albert Lee (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandolin, piano); Herb Pedersen (acoustic guitar, 12-string guitar, banjo, background vocals); Al Perkins (acoustic guitar, pedal steel guitar, dobro, banjo); Ricky Skaggs (acoustic guitar, mandolin, fiddle, background vocals); Jon Randall Stewart (acoustic guitar, mandolin); Randy Sharp (acoustic guitar, background vocals); Trevor Veitch, Rick Cunha, Tony Rice, Rick Cuhna (acoustic guitar); Ethan Johns (electric guitar, drums); Gerry McGee (electric guitar); Ben Keith (pedal steel guitar); Jerry Douglas , Mike Auldridge (dobro); Daniel Lanois (dulcimer, mandolin); David Lindley, Byron Berline (mandolin); Jim Hoke, Mickey Raphael (harmonica); Wayne Goodwin (tenor saxophone); Bill Payne (piano); Donald Johnson (electric piano); Emory Gordy (bass instrument); Kenny Edwards (acoustic bass); Roy Huskey Jr. (double bass, upright bass, background vocals); Larry Atamanuik (drums, percussion); Ed Greene, Russ Kunkel, John Ware (drums); Malcolm Burn (tambourine); Steve Fishell (percussion); Dianne Brooks, Fayssoux Starling McLean, Julie Miller (background vocals); Gram Parsons (vocals, acoustic guitar); Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, Linda Ronstadt (vocals); James Burton (electric guitar); Sam Bush (mandolin, fiddle); Glen D. Hardin (piano, electric piano); Jai Winding (piano); Ronnie Tutt (drums).

Liner Note Author: Robert K. Oermann.

Photographers: David Gahr; Michael Putland; Annie Leibovitz; Henry Diltz; Michael "Mick" Wilson; Richard McCaffrey.

Emmylou Harris is an artist whose body of work is so consistently strong one could almost pull 20 songs at random from her catalog, string them together, and end up with a pretty listenable disc -- which suggests that the real choices in putting together a "best of Emmylou" album has as much to do with what not to include as what should be on hand. Harris herself helped compile The Very Best of Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways, and while the album certainly doesn't avoid Harris' chart successes, she seems less interested in creating a definitive hits collection than in tracing her journey from the sweet, sad-voiced girl who sang with Gram Parsons to the gifted and thoughtful artist who has lately crafted such mid-career masterpieces as Wrecking Ball and Red Dirt Girl. While the album isn't sequenced in a strictly chronological fashion, the results faithfully trace Harris' subtle but clear stylistic evolution while also offering plenty of evidence that she's perhaps the most naturally gifted song stylist to emerge in country music since the 1970s, able to swing from the honky tonk spirit of "Two More Bottles of Wine" to the rueful losers tale of "Pancho and Lefty" to the gospel passion of "Calling My Children Home" without missing a step. Her superb taste in collaborative musicians, songwriters, and duet partners is also clearly evident throughout, and while the surfaces of later tracks such as "Orphan Girl" and "Michelangelo" may have a different feel, the depth and clarity of Harris' voice and the singular beauty of her creative vision lend this material all the commonality one could need. (And the album's one new track, "The Connection," suggests there's plenty more where all this came from.) If you're looking for an introduction to Emmylou Harris' broad and remarkable body of work, The Very Best of Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways is a strong starting point, and if you simply want to hear 75 minutes of superb music, this fills the bill on that score as well. ~ Mark Deming

HEARTACHES & HIGHWAYS is partly a single-disc distillation of

ANTHOLOGY, a two-CD collection of Emmylou Harris's Warner Brothers

recordings. While it contains many tracks found on ANTHOLOGY, HEARTACHES ventures further to include material from Harris's later

work on Elektra, thus providing a more all-encompassing career overview.

Harris is the first lady of progressive country, and has done more to advance the concept's cause over the decades than anyone. HEARTACHES follows her trail from early, pioneering country-rock duets with Gram Parsons to her own updates of classic country tunes. Harris's perennial knack for catching on to rising songwriting luminaries is made plain with prescient covers of songs by Townes Van Zandt and Gillian Welch (Harris's attention helped the careers of both troubadours). The Elektra material finds Harris pushing the envelope ever further, venturing-- with the help of visionary producer Daniel Lanois--into moody, atmospheric territory far from honky-tonk confines. HEARTACHES & HIGHWAYS is the most comprehensive single-CD collection of Harris's work on the market. minimize