Quarter Moon in..Ten Cent Town [Original recording remastered]

Her 1978 album is yet another showcase of Emmylou's immaculate vocals and tasteful choice of material. It opens with the flowing ballad Easy From Now On that is followed by the rhythmic and uptempo Two More Bottles Of Wine. Next comes an expert interpretation of Dolly Parton's To Daddy, a moving story song.

There are two compositions by Jesse Winchester: The poetic My Songbird, a fragile and stirring exploration of spirituality, and the defiant I Aint Living Long Like This, the closest to a rock song here. An even more intense live version of My Songbird is found on the great live album Spyboy.

Quarter Moon offers a perfect mix of slow ballads like Defying Gravity and mid tempo songs with a foot-tapping beat, like Leaving Louisiana In The Broad Daylight. There are three duets: The traditional Green Rolling Hills, sung with Fayssoux Starling, One Paper Kid with Willie Nelson that has prominent harmonies and distinctive harmonica, and LaCassine Special, a French song with Barry Tashian.

There is plenty of stylistic variety on this masterpiece, from the tender devotional My Songbird to the harder edged Leaving Louisiana and the bucolic Green Rolling Hills to the Cajun style of LaCassine Special. Both of the bonus tracks are live recordings that perfectly suit the mood of the original album.

On this work of true greatness, my favorite songs are To Daddy, Songbird, Louisiana, Gravity, Green Rolling Hills and LaCassine Special. But everything else is superb too! Quarter Moon is another masterpiece by Emmylou Harris.

This album has much to recommend it and has a similar country rock styling to Emmylou's previous album, Luxury liner. It features three of her own country hits and two other songs that were major country hits for others soon afterwards.

Two more bottles of wine was originally written and recorded by Delbert McClinton, but the song remained obscure for a couple of years. Emmylou made the song her own and topped the country charts with it. In the nineties, Martina McBride covered it and included it on her Wild angels album.

To Daddy was written and recorded by Dolly Parton but plans to release it were dropped when Dolly heard Emmylou's rendition of the song. Dolly's original version is brilliant - it eventually appeared on the compilation Essential volume 1 I will always love you - but despite her exuberance, Dolly is very modest about her own talents and it is entirely in character that she withheld her own version to allow Emmylou to have the first publicly available version of the song. It was another huge country hit for Emmylou, peaking at number three.

Easy from now on, the excellent ballad that opens the set, was another single released from the album, just failing to make the country top ten. Carlene Carter later revived it by including it on her album, I fell in love, one of my favorite albums of all time.

Leaving Louisiana in the broad daylight (a huge country hit for the Oak ridge boys) and I ain't living long like this (a huge country hit for Waylon Jennings) are both outstanding up-tempo songs that could have been Emmylou's own hits - she recorded them first - but you can only release so many singles from an album as a single and it is a tribute to the strength of this album that others could have hits with covers of her album tracks.

Among the other tracks are two excellent Jesse Winchester songs (Defying gravity and My songbird), while Willie Nelson puts in an appearance on One paper kid. Two other excellent songs, Green rolling hills and Burn that candle, round off this masterpiece.

But wait - this re-mastered edition includes two extra tracks, both live recordings. Even more reason to buy this excellent album.

Emmylou Harris was familiar to me from the duet with John Denver (Wild Montana Skies). She has special vocals so I had to listen to something that's hers. I stumbled upon this album by chance but fell in love with it in an instant. It has rich melodies, beautyful lyrics and various rythems. Every time I listen to it, it sounds fresh and somehow it reminds me of going home. It has something familiar and comforting about it. In my case, it was love at first hearing.