Emmylou Harris - Heartaches & Highways: The Very Best of Emmylou Harris

Emmylou Harris has one of the most instantly recognizable voices in all of music, from her beginnings in folk-rock to her Grammy-nominated country, her distinctive, mournful harmonies have appeared on thousands of songs, from her own beautiful melodies to singing harmony and duets with great names throughout music. It took some work to boil down her extensive catalog of music into a single disc, but Rhino and WB have done a pretty good job here.

Every so often when I'm listening to a song I'll hear the gentle rise and fall of a harmonic voice in the background and I'll think, "That's Emmylou Harris." It always is. She seems to appear as a background vocalist on more albums and more songs than any other headliner in existence, lending her absolutely unique vocals to friends' songs from folk to country to roots rock. Yet for all those appearances as a background vocalist, she is a striking soloist, a performer of unsurpassed soul with a voice of remarkable beauty, coming from a place that could only be described as 'divine.'

Collected here are many of her finest performances, including a mournful performance of Townes Van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty," tracks from her mostly self- penned "Red Dirt Girl" and "Stumble Into Grace," and even Gram Parsons' magnificent "Love Hurts" where Emmylou sings backup (which makes me wonder why Bob Dylan's "Oh Sister" or "Romance in Durango" aren't here, as they feature her just as prominently).

Of course, this claims to be a "very best of," not a greatest hits collection. As such, possibly one of Emmylou's most played country tracks is not here, her cover of Hank Snow's "Movin' On." But these are some of the finest tracks, chosen largely by Harris herself, to showcase important points in her career as well as spotlighting her importance as a songwriter, roots musician, and female performer in a genre that's notoriously hard on women.