Cowgirl's Prayer

Emmylou Harris has never cut a bad album and has never recorded a false note. She has chosen her songs carefully and while her arrangements have swung from one angle to another, she has never sounded out of place. 1993’s Cowgirl’s Prayer is a straightforward collection — her last before teaming up with mood-master Daniel Lanois — that features Harris delving into the songs of Lucinda Williams (“Crescent City”), David Olney (the spoken word “Jerusalem Tomorrow”), Jesse Winchester (“Thanks to You”) and Leonard Cohen (“Ballad of a Runaway Horse”). Each tune is fused with that particular songwriter’s lyricism and then given the Emmylou Harris twirl, that breathless sense of hope and doom. Harris came close to “You Don’t Know Me” on Butch Hancock’s “If You Were a Bluebird” off her Bluebird album, but here she tackles the Eddy Arnold classic head on. Trisha Yearwood, Alison Krauss and Ashley Cleveland provide back-up vocals, but Harris has already left country music for the idiosyncratic musings of the singer-songwriter, as Harris herself contributes the touching “Prayer In Open D” to the proceedings.