A Merry Yee-Haw to Y'all...

Occasional Albums Thing 056 - Emmylou Harris “Light Of The Stable”

If you’ve followed along with this blog you’ll know I’m a sucker for female singers and particularly Emmylou Harris, from her beginnings with Gram Parsons & The Fallen Angels right through to her groundbreaking album “Wrecking Ball” which went off like a volcano in Country Music circles. I also bloody love Christmas. Not so much the Christ bit of it but everything else that goes with it. A big part of the everything else that goes with it is the music, whether that be drunkenly singing along to Slade in the pub during the lead up to the big day, remembering my Dad playing Handel’s “Messiah” and my folks love of the “Johnny Mathis Christmas Album”, which is still the first thing that gets played in our house on Xmas Day. So, Xmas and Emmylou…gotta be a winner, right ? So here it is… Emmylou’s Christmas album !

We get your Christmas standards (“O Little Town Of Bethlehem”, “Away In A Manger”, “The First Noel”, “Little Drummer Boy” and “Silent Night”)all delivered Country/Bluegrass style. Tex Logan’s Bluegrass stomper “Christmas Time's A-Coming” kicks things off in a jaunty style that might just get your Xmas party in the Appalachians bouncing (BTW Logan apart from being a Bluegrass Fiddler was a Phd qualified engineer at Bell Labs who worked with Manfred R. Schroeder, the fella who pioneered MP3 audio). Then it’s a couple of standards before the first of the originals in Rodney Crowell’s (guitarist in Emmylou’s Hot Band) “Angel Eyes”. A bit maudlin in all honesty.

Title song “Light Of The Stable” features backing vocals by Dolly Parton, Neil Young and Linda Ronstadt. Elsewhere on the album Willie Nelson gets in on the BV’s and we find Country music giants like Ricky Scaggs on Banjo, Violin and Mandolin, James Burton (guitarist for Elvis and Gram Parsons) and Emmylou’s Hotband British guitar ace Albert Lee makes an appearance on Mandolin.

You won’t find any sleigh bells or Noddy type exhortations of it being Xmas here. This is a traditional Country album, conservative with that small c, it just happens that the songs are about Christmas. I like it cos I get sick of hearing the same old, same old Xmas songs all the time and I happen to think Emmylou sings like an angel. It may not be for you but I don’t really care, it’ll sit nicely with my Johnny Mathis, Phil Spector and Brian Setzer Xmas albums on the 25th.

Beautiful Star Of Bethlehem - https://youtu.be/WY7gPR-5zL0?si=vV2-gv3phvq3N8j9