Читать книгу The Secret History of Entertainment - David Hepworth, David Hepworth - Страница 16

In 1972 Emmylou Harris was a twenty-four-year-old single mother singing folk songs by night in a Washington club called Clyde’s. One night Rick Roberts of The Flying Burrito Brothers happened to hear her perform ‘It Wasn’t God That Made Honky Tonk Angels’. He was so impressed that he returned the following evening with fellow Burrito Chris Hillman. Two nights later, The Burritos were preparing to play a show fifty miles away when they were joined backstage by former member Gram Parsons. He told Hillman he was planning a new record for which he needed a featured girl singer. Hillman said he had heard a fine singer a couple of nights earlier but couldn’t remember her name and didn’t have her number.

At that very moment a girl fan who happened to be backstage with the band announced that she was Harris’s babysitter and obviously had her number. Introductions were made. Parsons and Harris met and sang together. Harris recorded Parsons’s first solo album G.P. with him and country rock was born. ‘I lucked into this whole thing,’ said Harris years later. ‘One little millimeter would have made the difference. If my babysitter hadn’t been at that Flying Burrito Brothers concert and given Gram my phone number, if Gram hadn’t come into my life, who knows what would have become of me?’