1 Emmylou Harris Elite Hotel

REPRISE 1975, RHINO REMASTER 2004

£3.99 You Say: “From her early days, it has to be… her cover of Sin City was the best possible tribute to Gram. And Together Again helped make her a major force in country music in her own right.” Ben L Connor, MOJO Facebook Recorded just months after her de facto solo debut, Elite Hotel was Harris’s first US country Number 1 album, and a Grammy-winner to boot. It’s a great long-player for two key reasons: first, the kind of easy honky-tonking that’s heard on opener Amarillo (a co-write with creative partner Rodney Crowell); and second, the perfection of her vocals on a run of emotive material that sits somewhere completely different: Buck Owens’ Together Again, Paul McCartney’s 1966 peach Here, There And Everywhere, and The Flying Burrito Brothers’ Sin City. As with her other early albums, Elite Hotel was given an expanded release in 2004: to get a complete understanding of her centrality to both country and the music of the 1970s, start here.