HERE AND THERE by EMMYLOU HARRIS Compact Disc GFR078

In 1975, executives at Warner Brothers, told Emmylou Harris they would agree to keep recording her music if she would "get a hot

band". Harris did just that, enlisting guitarist James Burton and pianist Glen Hardin, both of whom had played with Elvis Presley and well as with Gram Parsons alongside Emmylou. Other Hot Band members were drummer John Ware, pedal steel guitarist Hank DeVito, and bassist Emory Gordy, Jr., with whom Harris had worked while performing with Parsons. Singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell was enlisted as a rhythm guitarist and duet partner.

Elite Hotel, released in December 1975, re-affirmed the buzz created by Harris’s previous album, Pieces of the Sky. Unusual forcountry releases at the time, which largely revolved around a hit single, Emmylou’s albums borrowed their approach from the LP-oriented rock market. In terms of quality and artistic merit, tracks like ‘Sin City’, ‘Wheels’, and ‘Till I Gain Control Again’, which weren'tsingles, easily stood against tracks like ‘Together Again’, ‘Sweet Dreams’, and ‘One of These Days’, which were. Elite Hotel was a No. 1 country album and also did sufficiently well as a crossover success with the rock audience. It won a Grammy in 1976 for Best Country Vocal Performance/ Female.

In early ’76, Emmylou and the Hot Band went out on tour to promote the new record, during which they played 23 concerts across the US, plus 3 shows in the UK, and one-a-piece in Holland and Germany. Generally considered by fans and critics alike as probably thefinest performance of the tour, the group’s gig at London’s Hammersmith Odeon on 23rd February was majestic. Recorded for live FM broadcast across Britain, and synched too back home in America, this quite spectacular concert has remained ‘in the can’ for almost45 years. However, with the release of this new CD, all that changes and the show in question is available here for the first time,allowing this extraordinary country girl’s worldwide fanbase an opportunity to own forever, as part of their collections and libraries, a little piece of Emmylou Harris history.