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.
The Original Album Collection is a series which brings together a collection of albums from an artists catalogue, all together in one convenient and compact pack. Each album is packaged in the original artwork in a cardboard slipcase. This very interesting in that to my knowledge two of these albums, "Evangeline" and "Thirteen" have never been released on CD before. Probably because they were not among Emmylou's best sellers, Warner Bros. passed them over when they were churning out dismal versions of catalogue material. Lucky for us, in order to release this package Rhino had to master this pair of gems for the first time, and apparently decided to do it properly. The other three titles in this packaged have been released before and with the exception of "White Shoes" have even been re-mastered.
Emmylou Harris once called her 1985 release The Ballad Of Sally Rose, one of the singer’s most personal albums, a country opera. The song cycle is based loosely on her short time with influential singer-songwriter Gram Parsons, who died in 1973. Known more for singing songs written by others, this was Harris’ first self-composed album and it remains one of her favourites.
Courtney Marie Andrews' new full-length album, May Your Kindness Remain, was released March 23 on Loose in the UK & Europe and Fat Possum Records/Mama Bird Recording Co. in the USA. In advance of the release, the album's title track is premiered as part of NPR Music's "Songs We Love" series. Produced by Mark Howard (Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Tom Waits), the album was recorded over eight days at a rented house-turned-studio in L.A. UK fans fell for Courtney's breakthrough album Honest Life last year, when as the BBC put it, she became an "overnight success" after 10 years trying to break into the business. UK media such as The Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times compared her music to the work of classic artists such as Guy Clark, John Prine, Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Glen Campbell alongside modern references such as Laura Marling and Julie Byrne. The album became one of the biggest breakthrough records of 2017 in the UK, with 4-5 star reviews from publications including Daily Telegraph, Uncut, Mojo and Q Magazine, as well as reaching #1 on the Official U.K. Americana Chart Independent Album Breakers Chart.