Originally posted on Instagram, April 25, 2020.
When fact-checking my own post about 'GP', to see if that really was Emmylou Harris's recorded debut, I found something wild. Not only was 'GP' not the first album Harris sang on, I actually had her debut album in my collection. I'd had no idea what it was. So here's a real oddity- 'Gliding Bird' by Emmylou Harris.
This album was a gift from one of my best friends, who kindly gave me some albums from the collection of a songwriter friend who passed away last year. This album was one of several Emmylou Harris records she brought me, and it seemed unusual for several reasons: it was on a label I'd never heard of, the cover art was kind of low-budget, and although the record was dated "1979", the music didn't sound like anything Harris or anybody else was doing in 1979.
Turns out, there's a good reason for that: these songs were recorded in the late 60s, when Harris was in New York trying to make it as a folk singer/songwriter. She signed with Jubilee Records and started making this album, but right after she recorded it, the label went bankrupt, leaving 'Gliding Bird' floating in limbo. She ended up moving back in with her parents in Virginia, where the Flying Burrito Brothers found her playing small clubs two years later. The rest, of course, is country music history.
But that wasn't the end for 'Gliding Bird'. By 1979, Emmylou Harris was a superstar, and Emus, a semi-legit reissue label, had acquired the Jubilee catalog. When Harris found out Emus was rereleasing old material without permission to cash in on her current fame, she sued them on every count her legal team could think of. Emus Records went bankrupt as well, and Harris herself says her first solo album was 'Pieces Of The Sky'.
Although Harris has disowned 'Gliding Bird', that doesn't mean it's a bad album. It's just different, like a look into an alternate timeline where Emmylou Harris made it as a folk singer rather than a country star. But the covers of Hank Williams' "I Saw The Light" and Bob Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" are classic Emmylou, and would fit on any of her 70s albums. This early in her evolution, you could already hear the star she would become.
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