Emmy Lou Harris

The career of Emmylou Harris has spanned the wide open range of American music. Whether singing traditional ballads, country classics, or her own highly personal compositions, her achingly pure voice and emotional commitment to her music have remained constant. She first won national attention in the early 1970s, recording and performing with country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons. Her major label solo debut Pieces of Sky in 1975 gave her a Top Ten hit, "If I Could Only Win Your Love." The 1976 follow-up, Elite Hotel, included two Number One songs, "Together Again," and "Sweet Dreams," and won her the first of a dozen Grammy Awards. At the end of the '70s, as commercial country music wandered farther from its roots, she championed traditional sounds in albums like Blue Kentucky Girl and Roses in the Snow. In 1987 she enjoyed one of the biggest successes of her career with the album Trio, recorded with her friends Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. Over the years she has continued to collaborate with old friends like Nell Young, while also recording with younger talents like Beck and the women of Lilith Fair. More recent albums, such as 2011's Hard Bargain, have consisted almost entirely of her own songs. This podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2005 Summit in New York City, presents Emmylou Harris in conversation with her friend F. Warren Hellman, Chairman of the multibillion-dollar private equity firm Hellman & Friedman. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley and Harvard Business School, Warren Hellman held leadership positions at the investment banking firm Lehman Brothers before striking out on his own to found Hellman & Friedman in 1984. A resident of San Francisco, he is well known for his philanthropic activities throughout the Bay Area. In this podcast, he discusses the music festival Hardly Strictly Bluegrass that he presents each year in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Emmylou Harris shares her lifelong passion for music and recalls how she first learned to play guitar.