Monday Music: Kyie (Emmylou Harris with John Paul White)

 From the YouTube site:

Performed by Emmylou Harris with John Paul White. Produced by Phil Madeira. Written by Emmylou Harris & Phil Madeira. From "Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us, Volume II" on Mercyland Records, LLC.

 

Bless the Mothers and the Daughters

The Fathers and the Sons

Whose Journey’s now ended

Whose Journey’s just begun

The helpless and the holy

Who do and don’t believe

Bless us in Thy mercy

Where all come to grieve

Kýrie eléision

Bless the found and the forsaken

The fearful and the bold

The children of the ages

The broken in the hall

The callous and the caring

The weary to the bone

Bless us in Thy mercy

As we walk this world alone

Kýrie eléision

For we all are bound together

In our sorrow and despair

Bless us in Thy mercy

O, hear our humble prayer

Kýrie eléision

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Monday Music: Scotland (Emmylou Harris and The Nash Ramblers)

A bluegrass number, "Scotland,"  by Bill Monroe, performed live at the Ryman Auditorium in 1992  by  Emmylou Harris and The Nash Ramblers. 

 

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Monday Music: Across the Great Divide (Nanci Griffith)

Emmylou Harris, Nina Gerber and Pete Kennedy join Nanci Griffith on Kate Wolf's, "Across the Great Divide." From Other Voices, Other Rooms filmed at The Paramount Theatre, Austin Texas (1993).

 

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Dylan Covers: Every Grain of Sand (Emmylou Harris)

In honor of Bob Dylan's birthday this week, I'm sharing some of his songs performed by other singers. Emmylou Harris sang "Every Grain of Sand" at Johnny Cash's funeral in 2003. She recorded the song for her album The Wrecking Ball. Dylan first recorded the song for his Shot of Love album released in 1981.

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Monday Music: Wayfaring Stranger

In 1980, country-music artist Emmylou Harris made history when she identified with the bluegrass genre in her sixth album, Roses in the Snow. Many guest-appearances are featured on the album including Johnny Cash and a young Ricky Skaggs, who would later proclaim to his own audiences that after wandering in the wilderness of country music he entered the promised land of bluegrass. "Wayfaring Stranger" became a hit single on the country charts that year.

A Bit of Authentic Music

"I went to Nashville to learn to write country music. When I finally learned how to write it, they stopped recording it."

                             ~ Pat Terry

I tend to take music in spells. A while back I was listening to jazz.  Before that I was into classical sacred music, then is was folk (it is often folk). We keep a radio on in the back of the house where our dogs are so they will have some stimulation when we are out of the house. We used to keep their radio on NPR, then my wife read some research demonstrating that dogs are most content with rock, so now we have the radio tuned to classic rock, which I've enjoyed when I'm at home with the dogs.

The music I am into now when I'm driving is country. That doesn't happen often but it does on occasion. I love the authentic music you hear on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band anthology albums and on blue grass recordings. What I've found this week is authentic music from Emmylou Harris and Rosanne Cash.  I began to get a taste for it again when I heard Pat Terry in a local concert at Moonlight on the Mountain. Then when browsing the record shop, I came across a CD of Emmylou Harris called Duets.  Emmylou Harris definitely does authentic music, and this recording is one I have enjoyed. It includes previously recorded material she has sung with other artists. One such song is "Green Pastures" in which a young Ricky Skaggs accompanied her from her pivotal album, Roses in the Snow. That album was the one where she firmly planted herself in the bluegrass tradition. Other memorable songs include, "Love Hurts," with Gram Parsons; "That Lovin' You Feelin' Again," with Roy Orbison and "Gulf Coast Highway," with Willie Nelson.

Listening to Emmylou Harris reminded me that I have been wanting to hear Rosanne Cash's The List.  I drove by the public library and found that CD to borrow. If you don't know, "the list" refers to a handwritten list from her father, Johnny Cash, of the 100 songs that she needed to know if she wanted to know anything about country music. Rosanne Cash mentions in the liner notes that at the time she was a teenager oriented mostly to the pop hits on the radio. Thankfully, she kept that list from her dad and recorded 12 of the songs from that list of 100. If you listen to The List you will hear some truly authentic country music – the kind that  Pat Terry half-jokingly says they stopped recording about the time he learned to write it. It's music that speaks to the heart and tells of the hardships and realities of life.

Here's a track off  The List to give you a sample of the music:

Every Grain of Sand

“Every Grain of Sand” by Bob Dylan (from his Shot of Love album) is one of the most beautifully poignant songs I have heard. Elvis Costello, in an essay for Vanity Fair on his pick of the top 500 albums, said it might be the best song Dylan has ever written. Emmylou Harris sang the song at Johnny Cash’s funeral. I first heard it when I bought Shot of Love back in the summer of 1982 and was taken by it. The title calls to mind the opening lines from lines from William Blake’s poem Auguries of Innocence:

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."

Dylan uses that phrase, among other things to speak of the intimacy of the Creator with creation:

“In the fury of the moment I can see the master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.”
And later when he says, "...every hair is numbered like every grain of sand."

He also reveals the poet’s heartfelt connection with humanity and the world when he says,

“I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.”

While this is a song that rises to the level of poetry, it is essentially a work that must be heard for the full effect. Someone has put together some stunning visuals that wonderfully complement Dylan’s original recording of the song which you can view below. If you are one who must read the words, you can scroll down further to see the lyrics.

[Late note: The site for the video above no longer allows embedding to another site. To properly view it go to http://especialmusica.tv/videos/bob-dylan-every-grain-of-sand. Otherwise you may hear the song in the video below.]

Every Grain of Sand
by Bob Dylan

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dying voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
The sun beats down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other time it's only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.



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Cattle Call: A Tribute to Cowboys, Poets, and Other Wanderers

[Okay – I wasn’t really there. I just got so caught up in listening to the CD Emmylou Harris At the Ryman that I wrote this piece as though I were recalling the live performance.]


Emmylou Harris was at the Ryman. There was joy that night – and celebration. There were songs of elation and songs of regret; songs of work and songs of wistful longing. There was Bill Monroe before he died. Every seat was filled. There were beauticians and mechanics; miners and factory workers; carpenters and teachers. It was an audience of regular folks, out on a Saturday night. I had been fascinated by Emmylou Harris since my college days. I don’t know whether it was that clear voice that could simultaneously convey joy and longing, or if it was those eyes and the long, dark hair. Maybe it was the way she moved and carried herself; maybe it was some trait that resonated with my own anima (that creative feminine aspect of the inner self). At any rate, when she would sing, I would listen.

We heard bluegrass numbers and some folk-rock, but when she sang Tex Owens’ Cattle Call, my mind went back to another day. I remembered a day when I was 8 years old and we still had county fairs. Back then we could see prize livestock gathered in the cow barn during the fair, and once my Dad even gave me 50 cents to buy a chance on a beautiful black and white calf. I reminisced further and thought of drives in the countryside where the cattle outnumbered the people. There were visions of barbed wire fences, pastures, creeks, and salt licks.

Hearing the beautiful yodel in Cattle Call as the song continued, I went further back to an earlier day. I thought of that era of westward expansion and cattle drives when the cowboy came into his own as a symbol of rugged independence, idealized in film and rodeo. I wondered if little boys still want to be cowboys the way we did when we watched those Saturday matinees.

Then Emmylou came back to the chorus with the melodic call, and I went still further back to cattlemen of a different era. I thought of that cattleman from long ago who rode the plains of Whitby, England, back in the seventh century. Herding cattle by day and sitting in the mead hall by night, the song finally came to Caedmon. He first captured my heart and imagination in a high school literature class where I heard about that earliest of English poets. Caedmon was a cowherd who loved song, but was too bashful to pick up the harp and sing in the mead hall. Then a lady appeared to him in a vision and told him to sing of the beginning of things. From that day on, Caedmon sang songs of uncommon beauty, inspired by the lady in his dream. She must have looked and sounded a lot like Emmylou Harris.

I was captured by that story of Caedmon because even though I loved the song and was inspired by words, I was also painfully shy and seized by stage fright. I thought, if Caedmon was a cowboy, then perhaps I could be one, too. Caedmon was encouraged by Hilda of Whitby, leader of the local abbey. Later recognized as a saint, Hilda was a champion for poets and the Celtic way. She was an advocate for those early Englishmen and Celtic cowboys as the Latin world was forcing assimilation. She was the great mediator at the Council of Whitby to temper the Latin religious onslaught. Hilda remained a supporter of Caedmon and his non-Latin song. She must have looked and sounded a lot like Emmylou Harris.

Imagine my wonderful surprise when I learned that the American Book of Common Prayer honors the feast of St. Hilda is on my own birthday, November 18. Now each year on the anniversary of my birth, I think of saints and poets and cowboys.

The wafting of Cattle Call returned with the final chorus. The whole audience was enthralled. I could keep going back in time to other cowboys. Father Abraham was a cattleman as well, you know (he has been revered down through the years by all kinds of cowpokes who had names like Roy, and Schlomo, and Achmed). Abe left his homeland and drove his herds along the plains and valleys of Canaan. I don’t know who inspired him most, whether it was Sarah or Hagar, or the Almighty, (tradition indicates the latter) but whoever it was, she must have looked and sounded a lot like Emmylou Harris.



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