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Emmylou Harris
Biography
Though other performers sold more records and earned greater fame, few left as profound an impact on contemporary music as Emmylou Harris. Blessed with a crystalline voice, a remarkable gift for phrasing, and a restless creative spirit, she traveled a singular artistic path, proudly carrying the torch of "cosmic American music" passed down by her mentor, Gram Parsons. With the exception of only Neil Young -- not surprisingly an occasional collaborator -- no other mainstream star established a similarly large body of work as consistently iconoclastic, eclectic, or daring; even more than three decades into her career, Harris' latter-day music remained as heartfelt, visionary, and vital as her earliest recordings.

Harris was born on April 2, 1947, to a military family stationed in Birmingham, AL. After spending much of her childhood in North Carolina, she moved to Woodbridge, VA, while in her teens and graduated high school there as class valedictorian. After winning a dramatic scholarship at the University of North Carolina, she began to seriously study music, learning to play songs by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Soon, Harris was performing in a duo with fellow U.N.C. student Mike Williams, eventually quitting school to move to New York, only to find the city's folk music community dying out in the wake of the psychedelic era.
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