Emmylou Harris is a country, folk and alternative rock musician. She was born on April 2, 1947, in Birmingham, Alabama.

She spent her childhood in North Carolina and Woodbridge, Virginia, where she graduated from Gar-Field Senior High School as class valedictorian. In high school she also won a drama scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she began to study music seriously, learning to play the songs of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez on guitar. Leaving college to pursue her musical aspirations, she moved to New York, working as a waitress to support herself while performing folk songs in Greenwich Village coffehouses.

Harris toured as a member of Parsons' band, “The Fallen Angels”, in 1973. An album from that period, “Live 1973”, was released in 1982. Later in 1973, Harris returned to the studio with Parsons to record the album “Grievous Angel”.

She met Canadian producer Brian Ahern, who produced her major label debut album, “Pieces of the Sky”, released in 1975 on Reprise Records. The album included a number of cover songs, including The Beatles' "For No One" and Harris's first hit single, The Louvin Brothers' "If I Could Only Win Your Love".

Harris' subsequent “Elite Hotel” (1975), “Luxury Liner” (1977), and “Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town” (1978) were all successful country albums but also had appeal for rock listeners. Country music was experiencing crossover success at the time, and the approach of many country artists was to try to marry their music with smooth, L.A.-style pop, but Harris had more of a rock and roll sensibility and so aimed her music more in that direction.

In 1981, Harris reached the Pop Top 40 on the Billboard charts with a cover of "Mister Sandman"—again Top 10 Country as well as Adult Contemporary—from her “Evangeline” album. In 1987, Harris enjoyed the biggest commercial success of her long and varied career when she teamed up with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt for their long-promised and much-anticipated Trio album. The album spent five weeks at  no 1 on Billboard's Country Albums chart (also quickly reaching the Top 10 on the Pop Albums chart), sold several million copies and produced four Top 10 Country hits, including "To Know Him Is To Love Him", which hit  no 1. The disc was nominated for the coveted Album Of The Year Grammy award.

In 1997 and 1998, Harris performed in Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair, promoting feminism in music. Since 1999, Harris has been organizing an annual benefit tour called Concerts for a Landmine Free World. All proceeds from the tours support the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation's (VVAF) efforts to assist innocent victims of conflicts around the world.

www.emmylou.net