Emmylou Harris – Cimarron / Last Date
Grant Alden
Posted On July 1, 2000
Emmylou Harris hit a creative and commercial peak in the late 1970s that was almost without precedent for a female country singer. By 1980 she had a collection of songs and recordings in hand that hadn’t fit onto earlier records. Cimarron gathered those strays together. Last Date is her 1982 live homage to the classic country Gram Parsons is said to have introduced her to. Both albums appear on CD for the first time in the U.S.
Neither album is — nor sought to be — a monumental artistic statement, but, as with pretty much anything she chooses to sing, both have their moments. Cimarron, for example, is home to her gorgeous duet with Don Williams of Townes Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You” (the same track appeared on Williams’ Especially For You). It also offers a beautiful reading of Chip Taylor’s painfully honest “Son Of A Rotten Gambler”, Paul Kennerly’s “Born To Run”, and Bruce Springsteen’s “The Price You Pay”.
The rest of the songs are of less certain interest, though several were top ten hits. Despite having been cobbled together from a variety of sessions — more like a contemporary country album, in fact, than how Harris typically approached recording — Cimarron is relatively consistent throughout. This new edition appends the B-side “Colors Of Your Heart”.
Last Date features, as Brian Mansfield’s liner notes remind, the least-known incarnation of Harris’s Hot Band (Barry Tashian, on rhythm guitar and duet vocals, is the most prominent name), and captures a series of live dates in California clubs. Harris gives a strikingly vigorous reading to Carl Perkins’ “Restless” and offers a bleak version of Springsteen’s “Racing In The Streets” (hardly a classic country side, that; or is it?). Her first live album, it produced several hits, including Hank Snow’s “I’m Movin’ On” and the Everly Brothers’ “So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad)”. B-sides “Another Pot Of Tea” and “Maybe Tonight” fill out the disc.
Neither album is a defining moment. Yet there is much to be learned by listening to an artist’s body of work, and not simply their masterpieces. And much pleasure in the work. (Unfortunately, this leads to the collecting mania.)
