This is one of those weeks in which the world feels too much with us. For distraction’s relief, I can’t quite bring myself to turn to something frothy like bubblegum music. But I figured I could do far worse than to check in — finally — on Emmylou Harris’s newest album, Old Yellow Moon, with Rodney Crowell.
It probably marks me as the lamest sort of Harris fan to admit that I’d never heard of Crowell months ago, before this album started to get promoted. Heard of isn’t the same thing as heard, of course, and as it happens I’ve indeed heard a good deal of him: he was a charter member of Harris’s backup band, the Hot Band, back in the 1970s. And he’s written numerous songs for her. (She picked one, “Bluebird Wine,” to open 1975’s Pieces of the Sky, the album which more or less launched her career.)
The selection I’m featuring today was written and first recorded by Patti Scialfa for her 1993 album, Rumble Doll. It’s not a story song, exactly, but it implies a full story — one featuring a bad-boy heartbreaker as the narrator’s downfall (emotional if not in other respects). Here‘s Harris discussing Scialfa, and this song, with NPR’s Terry Gross:
She is an exquisite writer. She writes about the female heart, the poetry of being female, in a way that it just — every singer-songwriter female artist that I know loves this record. It never got the attention it should have. I suppose she will always be overshadowed because she’s, you know, Bruce Springsteen’s wife. But it doesn’t take away from the art, you know, her artistry.
…This particular song has been on my wish list to record ever since I first heard it. And I don’t know, I just put it off and put it off. It didn’t seem right for the project. And after a while, I admit I thought, well, how can I at the age of, you know, 65, sing, “Oh mama,” you know, talking to my mother, which actually is a reality in my case because my mother is still very much alive.
But it’s universal. You know, it’s that vulnerability that you feel when you know that you could fall, and you know how vulnerable… that you are. But it’s something that you cannot resist, and she just puts it in a way that is so beautiful, and the melody, too. And I actually really love — I love Rodney’s harmony on it.
The rendition of it here is haunted not just by Crowell’s harmonizing in the choruses and bridges, but by Harris’s classic foreground voice. There’s a thing which harmonica players do, called “bending the note,” and Harris offers up something similar here: her voice quavering, trembling on the brink of but not quite breaking.
About those harmonies, by the way: Crowell’s chief role in the Hot Band was as a harmony singer, so he and Harris have been blending their voices easily, naturally, for decades. But Harris frankly concedes that she doesn’t know exactly what harmony is (from The Tennesseean (2/24/2013), quoted on her “News” page):
How do you sing in harmony?…
Let’s ask the most prominent harmony vocalist of our time, one whose voice has blended elegantly with Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Willie Nelson, Keith Whitley, George Jones, Solomon Burke, Elvis Costello, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Roy Orbison, Mark Knopfler, Gram Parsons, Little Feat, Dan Fogelberg and three out of five ironically mustached East Nashville hipster baristas.
Let’s ask Emmylou Harris.
“I really don’t know,” says the Country Music Hall of Famer…
Come now, Ms. Harris. That’s like a member of Congress not knowing how to create gridlock, or a Goo Goo Cluster not knowing how to be delicious, or Taylor Swift not knowing how to make the “Oh, my God, I’m totally shocked!” face.
“Really,” Harris swears. “I’ve never studied intervals or parts. Whatever I’ve done came from total ignorance and fearlessness. For me, it’s whatever isn’t the melody.”
Whatever isn’t the melody. I — totally ignorant but hardly fearless I — will have to remember that.
Here’s their take on “Spanish Dancer”:
[Lyrics]
And, for comparison, here’s an entirely unofficial YouTube video over Scialfa’s own version:
deniz says
Wait, you mean, *the* Patti Scialfa? Springsteen’s wife? I hadn’t heard of any of this! Will have to delve deeper… “Spanish Dancer” makes me think of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s Spanish Dance Troupe: http://www.nme.com/nme-video/youtube/id/5EsQX2XbVwA
John says
Hi, Deniz — yes, it’s THE Patti Scialfa. :) (Well, not her in the video’s photo. But her voice, and her song: yeah.)
To make us even, I’ve never heard of Spanish Dance Troupe, either — but that’s a great connection!
Sally says
I am a big fan of Patti Scialfa’s solo work. I’m so glad you chose to highlight this song, and it’s so great that Emmylou often champions her (she previously recorded Patti’s “Valerie” and Patti sang backup on Emmylou’s “Tragedy.”) I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to Patti’s three CDs, but each is absolutely outstanding. As Emmylou said, she’s an exquisite songwriter. And, I love her voice. It’s a shame she is so overshadowed by Bruce, because she is an amazing talent in her own right.
John says
Hello Sally, and thanks for stopping by!
Patty Scialfa, as a songwriter, sounds as though she may be in the same situation as, say, Karla Bonoff: appreciated much more by professionals (and knowledgeable fans like yourself) than one could tell by looking at her own sales. As you say, it’s a real shame…!