Quarter Moon in a 10 cent town
This album has much to recommend it and has a similar country rock styling to Emmylou's previous album, Luxury liner. It features three of her own country hits and two other songs that were major country hits for others soon afterwards.
Two more bottles of wine was originally written and recorded by Delbert McClinton, but the song remained obscure for a couple of years. Emmylou made the song her own and topped the country charts with it. In the nineties, Martina McBride covered it and included it on her Wild angels album.
To Daddy was written and recorded by Dolly Parton but plans to release it were dropped when Dolly heard Emmylou's rendition of the song. Dolly's original version is brilliant - it eventually appeared on the compilation Essential volume 1 I will always love you - but despite her exuberance, Dolly is very modest about her own talents and it is entirely in character that she withheld her own version to allow Emmylou to have the first publicly available version of the song. It was another huge country hit for Emmylou, peaking at number three.
Easy from now on, the excellent ballad that opens the set, was another single released from the album, just failing to make the country top ten. Carlene Carter later revived it by including it on her album, I fell in love, one of my favorite albums of all time.
Leaving Louisiana in the broad daylight (a huge country hit for the Oak ridge boys) and I ain't living long like this (a huge country hit for Waylon Jennings) are both outstanding up-tempo songs that could have been Emmylou's own hits - she recorded them first - but you can only release so many singles from an album as a single and it is a tribute to the strength of this album that others could have hits with covers of her album tracks.
Among the other tracks are two excellent Jesse Winchester songs (Defying gravity and My songbird), while Willie Nelson puts in an appearance on One paper kid. Two other excellent songs, Green rolling hills and Burn that candle, round off this masterpiece.
Two more bottles of wine was originally written and recorded by Delbert McClinton, but the song remained obscure for a couple of years. Emmylou made the song her own and topped the country charts with it. In the nineties, Martina McBride covered it and included it on her Wild angels album.
To Daddy was written and recorded by Dolly Parton but plans to release it were dropped when Dolly heard Emmylou's rendition of the song. Dolly's original version is brilliant - it eventually appeared on the compilation Essential volume 1 I will always love you - but despite her exuberance, Dolly is very modest about her own talents and it is entirely in character that she withheld her own version to allow Emmylou to have the first publicly available version of the song. It was another huge country hit for Emmylou, peaking at number three.
Easy from now on, the excellent ballad that opens the set, was another single released from the album, just failing to make the country top ten. Carlene Carter later revived it by including it on her album, I fell in love, one of my favorite albums of all time.
Leaving Louisiana in the broad daylight (a huge country hit for the Oak ridge boys) and I ain't living long like this (a huge country hit for Waylon Jennings) are both outstanding up-tempo songs that could have been Emmylou's own hits - she recorded them first - but you can only release so many singles from an album as a single and it is a tribute to the strength of this album that others could have hits with covers of her album tracks.
Among the other tracks are two excellent Jesse Winchester songs (Defying gravity and My songbird), while Willie Nelson puts in an appearance on One paper kid. Two other excellent songs, Green rolling hills and Burn that candle, round off this masterpiece.
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