Ten reasons to see Emmylou Harris Tuesday

With 26 studio albums, plus dozens of full-on collaborative projects with artists from across the genres, Emmylou Harris – who performs Tuesday night at Ruth Eckerd Hall – has a catalog of recordings that span time, space, taste and the fickleness of the music industry.

She is a county music singer, and a skilled one, as anyone familiar with her chart hits can tell you. Harris even served a term as president of Nashville’s Country Music Association.

Yet Harris’ most notable achievement is a tad more subtle; beginning in the mid 1970s she re-imagined what country music could be. Along with producer Brian Ahern, Harris made bright, smart country records that intertwined classic harmony group sounds (think the Louvin Brothers, Buck Owens’ Buckaroos, Johnny Cash and even the Everly Brothers) with musicianship by top-drawer rock ‘n’ roll players and singers, introducing a new generation to the thrills, chills and erstwhile delights of a genre they’d thought was simply not cool.

How did this elegant Alabamian with the angelic soprano, who started her career as a guitar-strumming folkie, become the catalyst for a major music game change?

She did it by championing songwriters. Over the course of all those records, and decades of traveling the world, she’s always kept her ears – and her mind – open. Although Harris began composing later in her career, she’s a peerless “song finder.” And as an interpreter, she makes them her own.

Harris, for example, was the first to record songs by Rodney Crowell, who to this day is one of her closest friends and most frequent collaborators. “Emmylou Harris is a supreme artist,’ Crowell says in I Need to Know: The Lost Music Interviews.

“In her way, even as an interpreter, she’s a poet. She’s very sensitive in communications. She communicates with her songs, poetically. The songs she chooses, the language, the atmosphere. It’s her vision.”

Said Harris in the same book:  “It’s very hard to explain, because I do feel that I’m a channel for music. I know that sounds a little New Age, perhaps. I know that I’m part of it, but it seems like music comes through us. It’s not like, ‘This is mine, I’m responsible for it completely,’ but it’s so much of who I am and the way I express myself and how I see the world is wrapped up in music that I can’t imagine who I would be without it.”

Here are 10 essential cover songs from the Emmylou Harris catalog. Be advised, it’s a subjective list, and but for space limitations could have gone to 20. Or 30. Or higher.

Tickets for Tuesday’s concert are here.

Together Again. Harris’ first chart-topping single (from 1976’s Elite Hotel) was perhaps her most “pure” country record to date. She imbues Buck Owens’ tearful reconciliation ballad with deep-indigo pathos. Right then, she established herself as a master of the genre.

Green Pastures. So much to choose from the 1980 bluegrass-infused Roses in the Snow, but let’s celebrate this traditional Christian song, sung as a duet with the incomparable Ricky Skaggs and featuring a strange but somehow appropriate (and therefore brilliant) acoustic guitar solo from Willie Nelson.

Deeper Well. Similarly, Harris’ 1996 Wrecking Ball, produced by Daniel Lanois, is stuffed with riches. This David Olney blues is a good representation of that groundbreaking collaboration between artist and producer – Harris’ voice is upfront over a wash of bodhran, guitar and sonic moodiness. It’s a weird song, but like the rest of the album, it works beautifully in its own way.

Born to Run. Harris covered several Bruce Springsteen songs, but “Born to Run” wasn’t one of them. This is a galloping analogy about a horse (or is it a person?) that never gives up. It was written by Paul Kennerley, to whom Harris was briefly married, and appeared on Cimarron (1982). They later collaborated on the fascinating-but-flawed concept album The Ballad of Sally Rose.

Crescent City. Written by Lucinda Williams, it’s a bright, mid-tempo, Cajun-flavored look back at Louisiana family life, from a narrator who’s moved on. It’s from Cowgirl’s Prayer (1993). Bonus track: Harris’ take on Williams’ “Sweet Old World” (from Wrecking Ball) is a shiver-inducer.

Hickory Wind. Harris was a protégé and singing partner of Florida-born Gram Parsons, one of the first to cross-breed hard country with rock ‘n’ roll. “Hickory Wind” is one of Parsons’ most achingly beautiful pure country ballads, and Harris’ reading on Blue Kentucky Girl (1979) is a heartache and a half.

Pancho and Lefty. Everyone, it seems, has covered Townes Van Zandt’s minimalist tale of western outlaws who become anachronisms in the modern world, but Harris’ early version – from 1977’s Luxury Liner – remains the one to beat. It was her rendition, incidentally, that convinced Willie Nelson that he should cut it as a duet with Merle Haggard. And history was made.

To Daddy. It might come as a surprise to learn that this tender tale about a woman who leaves her husband and children behind, in search of “love I need so badly,” was written by Dolly Parton. “She never meant to come back home/If she did, she never did say so to Daddy.” Devastating. From Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town (1978).

The Magdalene Laundries. Joni Mitchell’s wrenching ballad about Irish workhouses for unwed mothers was given a definitive and deeply emotional reading by Harris on the all-star 2007 A Tribute to Joni Mitchell.

Kern River. From 2008’s All I Intended to Be, Merle Haggard’s sad look back at a lover lost to the swift waters of his hometown river becomes a bittersweet and dreamlike showcase for three-part harmony and sweetly singing dobro.