Backing It Up

This is about a little-known legend in country music. It's this: the backup singer is the most important person in the band.

Back a couple years ago, a certain pop singer decided to switch places with her backup singer who had country-and-western roots. They called their one-time band The Wreckers. The music on it was pop- to alt-country. I personally think there was a reason behind that name: maybe they were "wrecking" the old concept that the backup singer was unimportant. But I really don't know why they used that name -- it's a theory, for sure.

Many pop singers make great use of their backup singers. But in country and western, they are an essential ingredient. From Buck Owens to Taylor Swift, the backup singer provides the all-important "high and lonesome" harmony in the choruses that make the listener's heart melt with empathy. After all, we've all had the blues.

The harmonies are definitely off-key as classical music goes (remember that mercurius-21 is no musician, only an avid listener) but those sounds are part of history in the American South. Several hymnals from early days use "shape-note" singing ("Southern Harmony" and I think "Sacred Harp" are two examples), and some of the "blue" harmony notes in C&W music may have come from that sound.

Sometimes a former backup singer steps into the spotlight -- the result can be misery or magic. But if that singer can make the misery sound magical, they have a career for life.

Most backup singers are the same gender as the frontman or -woman. But there are exceptions.

It's my recollection (I could so easily be wrong) that Dolly Parton was Porter Wagoner's backup. Then, she became the late Wagoner's sidekick on his TV show. Then, she went solo, and then ... .

I know for a fact that Emmylou Harris was backup for Gram Parsons, and there is a classic live album to attest to the magic of that vocal combination.

After Parsons died (drugs, I think), Emmylou got her own album deal. I wasn't feeling the cuts on the first LP (1975's Pieces of the Sky) but the second one called Elite Hotel  -- pronounced ELL-ete HOE-tell if you're really "country" -- sent me to the moon.

Actually, I bought her third LP first -- called Luxury Liner -- and that's what put me in orbit. Then I bought "Elite Hotel" and it shot me into outer space.

You see, Emmylou's first LPs put some great alt-country (the term actually did not exist back then) next to some classic material I grew up listening to -- hard twang and all.

To hear someone like Emmylou rip your heart out with the same stuff you couldn't stand when you were a kid almost strained credulity: "Am I really hearing this?"

Then to have her nail the latest and greatest (truly) from Townes VanZandt or Rodney Crowell on the very next track ... . It was like gold poured in this hillbilly's ears.

As a former backup singer, Emmylou chose her own wisely. First, Ricky Skaggs (as I recall) was her backup singer and fiddle/mandolin sideman in the touring band, and later Fayssoux Starling turned in some dynamite studio harmonies. Ricky put the lonesome sound on the classic songs; Fayssoux got the sighs and tears going on the modern stuff (Afternote: There's an exception mercurius-21 forgot about: 'Hello Stranger' with its "chanty" call-and-response structure.).

Nothing else in the LP racks at that time came close to having this effect on me. And all this came after I graduated from college and got started in a very uncertain world, complete with lousy economy and no real expectations.

These records were friends. They were the backup I needed to crack a Bud to after yet another weird day at work when I really wasn't all that used to weird days at work.

They were gold. Thanks, guys.

Originally posted to LJ on April 8, 2009