© Jay Blakesberg

Rodney & Rosanne: Are In-Laws Really Outlaws?

By Geoffrey Himes

Early in 1977, Waylon Jennings invited Emmylou Harris to play for a party at his house in Nashville. She needn't bring her entire band, he said; it would be an intimate, acoustic affair. So Harris brought along Rodney Crowell and his hometown Houston buddy Donivan Cowart to be her acoustic guitarists and harmony singers. Harris was still a Californian in 1977, and here was a way to prove herself to such Tennesseans as Jennings, his wife Jessi Colter and their pals.

Jennings and his circle had shaken country music to its foundations in the early ‘70s. Harris and Crowell would shake up Music Row just as thoroughly in the ‘80s, but in an entirely different way.  If Jennings and Willie Nelson transformed country music by plugging it back into the wild and wooly gestalt of the Texas dance hall, Harris, Crowell and such fellow travelers as Brian Ahern, Rosanne Cash, Guy Clark and Steve Earle would transform it by plugging it into the mountain tradition of bluegrass festivals and the literary bent of folk festivals.

If Jennings and Nelson were called the Outlaws, Harris and Crowell could be called the In-Laws. After all, Harris had just married her producer Ahern in January, and Crowell was going to meet Cash, his future wife, at Jennings' party. Harris was getting ready to release her fourth album, Luxury Liner, which featured two songs by her first important duet partner, Gram Parsons, and two by her second important duet partner, Crowell. It would also include "I'll Be Your San Antone Rose" by Susanna Clark, the wife of Guy Clark, mentor to Crowell and best friend to Townes Van Zandt (whose "Pancho & Lefty" would also be on Luxury Liner). In-laws indeed.

It was a movement that was just gathering momentum in 1977, but that momentum would carry these singer-songwriters forward all the way to 2008. This summer Harris released All I Intended To Be, her first full-album collaboration with her ex-husband Ahern since 1983. In September, Crowell will release Sex and Gasoline, a musical/literary meditation on life gone by, not unlike his ex-wife's last album, Black Cadillac.

On that fateful 1977 night, Harris, Crowell and Cowart set up at one end of Jennings' large family room; without mics they strummed their acoustic guitars and sang songs from Harris's first two Reprise albums, Pieces of the Sky and Elite Hotel. Crouched beside a pool table was Cash, the shy heiress of Nashville royalty--daughter of Johnny Cash, step-daughter of June Carter, step-granddaughter of Mother Maybelle Carter.

Rosanne was fascinated by Harris for professional reasons. Here was a way to combine the Dylanesque songwriting and Beatlesque harmonies she loved with the country music tradition she'd been born into. It was a template Rosanne would follow for the rest of her life.

She was fascinated by Crowell for different reasons. "I was really attracted to him right away," Cash confesses. "Then he and Donivan played ‘Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight,' which hadn't been recorded yet. I said, ‘Wow, that's the best song I've ever heard.'"

"Emmy and I sang duets at Waylon's house for an hour," Crowell recalls, "and Rosanne was over in the corner next to Susanna Clark. I would be disingenuous if I didn't admit that the famous family--Johnny Cash and June Carter--wasn't a flame to the moth. I was a big-time fan of both of them, and I was a young man drawn to that fame. It was something Rosanne and her sisters had to deal with all of their lives. That was a subtle part of it, but I also became captivated by her. Susanna noticed and said, ‘Here's her phone number; call her.' So I did."

"I was writing songs and I knew people," Cash says, "but I can't begin to explain how shy I was. I was a bit overweight and didn't want people to see me. But Carlene was going to Waylon's party and she invited me to come along. I was living with my dad in Hendersonville, and I tried on everything I owned, but nothing looked good. I was so depressed that I said, ‘No, I'm not going.' They walked out the door without me, and I opened the door and yelled at them, ‘Hold on, I'm going to come.' I just knew that for some reason I had to go."

Though flattered by Crowell's eventual phone call, Cash was reluctant to get involved with someone who was still married. To escape such complications, she flew off to Germany.

"I went to Germany to stay with a girl friend, Renata Damm, who worked with Ariola Records," Cash says. "I was following her around to all her meetings and Christmas parties, and these guys at Ariola said, ‘We'd like to hear a demo from you.' They were interested because I was Johnny Cash's daughter. I figured, no one in America will hear it, so what the hell, I might as well do it."

Her step-sister Carlene Carter had no scruples about married men; she got involved with Crowell and they flew off to England to work on Carter's debut album. The first glow of their infatuation faded in the London fog, though, and Crowell flew back to Nashville that fall. When he arrived, he discovered that Rosanne was back from Germany and living at her dad's house in Hendersonville, Tennessee, procrastinating about the demos that Ariola had asked for.

She kept putting them off because she couldn't decide what she wanted to do with her life. She was crazy about music, but she was scared to death of the touring musician's life. After all, it had taken her father away from her home, had gotten him hooked on pills, and had eventually wrecked his marriage. Was there a way to be an artist without the debilitating lifestyle?

She enjoyed writing songs and short stories, but no one in America was beating down her door to record or publish them. Here was an actual record company that wanted to hear her songs; it was a way to test the waters without the heavy expectations that would come with an American label. And maybe it was a chance to hang out with that married guy without actually dating him.

"I called Rodney," Cash explains, "and asked him, ‘Can you produce these demos?' He had never produced anything, but he was willing to try. In the process of making those demos, I really fell in love with him. But he was still married, so I couldn't say anything. I talked to June about it, and she said, ‘If he's married, you have to let it go.'" This was advice, of course, that June had been unable to follow herself.

"We went into her dad's studio," Crowell adds, "and recorded three or four tracks. That's when we started flirting. Our relationship was born out of our working. Somehow we got work and romance tangled into one thing. We never were able to separate the two. That's one reason we eventually separated; if we weren't working together, what were we doing?"

Three of those demos ended up on the debut German album, Rosanne Cash. They were the first tracks Crowell had ever produced, but they demonstrated how much he had absorbed from Brian Ahern while working on Harris' records. As his mentor had so often done, Crowell created a convincing rock'n'roll thump from a few concentrated instruments and then created a country music atmosphere by dropping in a twangy guitar or mandolin in key places without having them strum away at will. This carefully planned minimalism left lots of room for the vocals, and the 22-year-old Cash demonstrated the plump, personal tone that would soon become her trademark.

Crowell transformed "So Fine," the 1958 doo-wop hit by the Fiestas, into a stomping country two-step; Willie Nelson's bassist Bee Spears anchored the beat, and Carlene Carter joined her stepsister on the yelping chorus harmonies. Johnny Cash had rewritten Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice" as "Understand Your Man" and had turned it into a #1 country single in 1964. The song was returned to its Dylanesque roots in Crowell's Nashville Skyline-like arrangement; a sparkling mandolin solo by Ricky Skaggs' future father-in-law Buck White set off Rosanne's nicely understated vocal.

Her own composition, "Can I Still Believe in You?" was a broken-hearted ballad perfectly framed by Crowell's acoustic guitar picking. It was the best indication of her future work, for it set up a dramatic scene and then recounted the ensuing dialogue. A banished boy friend shows up at the singer's front door to ask for a second chance, but she counters his every argument with a reminder of past betrayals. Because the title is a question rather than a declaration, one can sense her own ambivalence.

Here was the template for dozens of songs to come. Cash was the rare writer in the ‘70s who demanded both the independence of feminism and the satisfactions of heterosexual romance. Those two desires often conflict--as they do in this song--and her determined efforts to resolve that dilemma would make her one of the most interesting singer-songwriters of her generation. A thread running through many of her songs is the refusal to settle for less than both--both the independence and the satisfaction.

"I remember telling my dad when I was 18 on the road with him," Cash told me in 1982, "‘I don't want to be somebody's little wife sitting at home. I want to do something.' He was totally surprised. He was shocked that I had any guts. I'm glad to be Rodney's little wife, but only because he doesn't try to make me do anything that I don't want to do. He encourages me to fulfill my potential. I love being married; it's not what I thought it was. I thought it would be real stifling, real boring, but it's not. It's wonderful--the companionship, the exchange of information."

For a description of the new kind of marriage the In-Laws were singing about, it's pretty hard to beat that quote. If the Outlaws had supplied the soundtrack for the rambling man, breaking loose from the confines of traditional marriage, the In-Laws were breaking loose from the same confines by creating a soundtrack for a new kind of marriage, the kind of egalitarian relationship that baby boomers were groping for. They believed the companionship, the talking and the sex could be combined with the freedom to pursue one's potential. Even though this particular marriage would eventually falter, here was the ideal that Cash and her fellow In-Laws were pursuing both in song and in life.

"We went into her dad's studio and tried a few tunes," Crowell remembers, "and her natural talent rose to the occasion. I started to believe in her and started to collaborate with her and push her. She was very shy, but in an innocent way. I said, ‘Try this. Do this.' It caught on, and she began to grow. I had never even thought about producing; I joked, ‘You just used that as a ploy to get next to me.' But once I did it, I enjoyed the work."

Cash was so pleased with the results that she sent them off to Germany with the suggestion that Crowell be allowed to produce the whole album in Nashville. No, the answer came back from Germany; Ariola wanted her to come to Munich to make the record with one of their staffers, Bernie Vonficht, even though he had never produced before. One American woman, Donna Summer, had just made her commercial breakthrough with a record produced in Munich, and Ariola was hoping they could turn the same trick with Cash.

"I wanted to make a rootsy, country-rock record," Cash says, "and Bernie wanted to make a Euro-pop record. We started fighting immediately. He started to correct my English pronunciation. He'd say, ‘No, the Americans pronounce it like this.' And I'd say, ‘What are you talking about? I'm an American.' He didn't have me sing in a vocal booth but right in front of the control-room glass with some baffles around me. He'd sit there in the control room with his finger on the button and as soon as I made the slightest mistake, he'd push the button and say, ‘No, no, no, you have to do it over.' So every line I was waiting for him to push the button. It was such a tense situation that it was impossible to be creative.

"He wanted me to record these jerk-off songs. I said, ‘No disco shit.' There was one song he wanted me to do, and I said, ‘I am not going to do that song; I hate it.' He had the musicians come in and cut a track on it, but I said, ‘No way am I going to sing that song.' He said, ‘This song is going to be a big hit for someone.' I said, ‘Fine, for someone else, not me.' After we finished my album, he put his own voice on the tracks and had a number-one hit in Germany." She chuckles. "Of course, he had to sing very high, because the tracks were cut for me."

The album that was released as Rosanne Cash in 1978 wasn't a terrible record. The songs were good; in addition to the three Nashville demos they included John Fogerty's "Feelin' Blue," George Jones' "I'm Ragged but I'm Right," two written by Crowell, and two more by Cash herself. Her vocal tone was already compelling, but her sense of phrasing and rhythm was tentative and underwhelming. Her lack of experience and lack of confidence were compounded by the unsupportive situation in the studio. It was a traumatic experience that made her wary of record companies for the rest of her life. That skepticism would help create the independence that made her career so unusual in country music.

"Listening to that record today," Cash says, "I like how innocent I was. But at the time I was so depressed I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't stop crying. I saw how you could be manipulated into expressing something that wasn't you and I found that humiliating. I told myself, ‘It's going to be released just in Europe; no one's going to talk about my dad. I can experiment and no one will know how it turns out.' I was thinking of myself as a European at that point; I wasn't planning to go back. I had an affair with an Israeli pop singer. Then Rodney called me in Munich on my 23rd birthday."

That was May 24, 1978. Crowell had just left Harris's Hot Band, replaced by Ricky Skaggs. Emmylou Harris had just scored her third #1 single, "Two More Bottles of Wine," off her fifth album, Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town. Susanna Clark not only co-wrote the lead-off track, "Easy From Now On," with Carlene Carter but also painted the album cover. Carter was about to release the debut album she'd recorded in London.

"Rodney and I started writing letters when I was in Germany," Cash remembers. "He was recording his first album and was having a real hard time. He was separating from his wife; he had his little girl by himself, and he had no money whatsoever. He had to take the baby to the studio and put her in a playpen. I was in love with him before that but I wouldn't admit it to him. I called up my mother and I was crying. I told her, ‘I'm so in love with this guy and he's married. What am I going to do?' And my mother said, ‘You can't do anything. You have to forget about him.' So I tried to. I didn't make any advances to him until I was in Germany and I started writing to him."

Even as this new romance was blossoming, Crowell's chance at his own recording career finally appeared. Harris' first three albums for Reprise had been a pleasant surprise for the honchos at Warner Bros. Records, which owned Reprise. Here was an artist with an unprecedented sound who was enjoying solid success on both the country and pop album charts at the same time. The inevitable question for any record executive was this: Was Harris a one-of-the-kind, irreproducible phenomenon or could the In-Law sound be applied to other artists?

The only way to know was to try a test case. But who? Gram Parsons was dead; Chris Hillman had just formed a trio with Gene Clark and Roger McGuinn; the voices of Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt were too much of a hurdle for a mass audience; Skaggs hadn't yet emerged as a lead vocalist; Steve Earle, Patty Loveless and Rosanne Cash weren't even on the radar. Harris's current duet partner, a good-looking guy who wrote some of her best songs, was the logical choice. Warner Bros. executive Andy Wickham asked Eddie Tickner, Harris' manager, "What about this kid?" Tickner said, "Yeah, that'll work." Crowell was the last to know.

"Eddie asked me, ‘Do you want a record deal?' Crowell explains. "I said, ‘Yeah.' ‘Do you want Brian to produce it?' I said, ‘Yeah.' ‘Do you want me to represent you?' I said. ‘Yeah.' It was that simple. I had just been playing Dodger Stadium with Emmy in front of Elton John, and I said, ‘I'll do that; I'll make a record and have hits like Emmy.' It was pretty jarring when it didn't happen that way."

It wasn't easy to leave the womb of the Hot Band. It was a steady paycheck and membership in the most innovative band in country music. But there was really no choice; you don't turn down a solo record deal with Warner Bros. And it wasn't easy for Harris to let him go, but she knew that anytime you hire the best musicians you run the risk of losing them to better opportunities. And she knew that she would still get first pick of Crowell's songwriting.

Crowell's debut album, Ain't Living Long Like This, was essentially an attempt to make an Emmylou Harris record with a male lead singer. It featured the same record company (Warner-Reprise), the same producer (Ahern), the same studio (Ahern's Enactron truck), the same engineers (Ahern, Cowart and Bradley Hartman), the same studio musicians (Ahern, Emory Gordy, Albert Lee, James Burton, Ricky Skaggs, John Ware, Glen Hardin, Hank DeVito and Mickey Raphael), the same singers (Crowell, Harris, Skaggs and Nicolette Larson), even the same songwriters (Crowell, Cowart and Dallas Frazier) as Harris's contemporary albums--1978's Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town and 1979's Blue Kentucky Girl.

Artistically, it worked. Crowell achieved the same balance of sonic clarity and thematic irony, of progressive songwriting and country tradition, of blue-collar storytelling and pop-rock arrangements as his mentor. Ain't Living Long Like This didn't sound like a Gram Parsons or Guy Clark album; it sounded like an Emmylou Harris record. It was the second In-Law Country project by someone other than Harris (after Mary Kay Place's Aimin' To Please). It proved that the approach was not limited to an individual but could be used by anyone.

The LP was on the short side; there were only nine songs and Crowell wrote only six of them. But five of those six were gems that would eventually become country standards. Two of them, "Song for the Life" and "Voila, an American Dream," were among the first songs that gained Crowell a nod of approval from the hard-to-please Guy Clark at those Nashville picking parties in 1973.
The other four originals on the album, however, were products of Crowell's time in California. The one that dealt explicitly with the Golden State, "California Earthquake," was a tedious, underwhelming attempt to come up with a six-minute sequel to Parsons' "Sin City."  But the remaining three were In-Law classics.

"Baby, Better Start Turnin' ‘Em Down," later recorded by both Rosanne Cash and Emmylou Harris, articulates the basis for the In-Law Country revolution more directly than any other song. The opening couplet, "In this modern world we're livin' in, the rules ain't like they've ever been," summed up the dilemma for baby boomer couples in the late-‘70s: The old assumptions about male and female roles were no longer valid but the new assumptions were not yet established. If men and women were going to have equal rather than unequal roles in marriage, they were going to have to negotiate the ground rules. And if they were going to negotiate, they were going to have to share information rather than staying in separate realms. Traditional country couldn't help them make this transition.

But neither could rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll had such an instinctive distrust of any rules that it was no help in finding new rules for these marriages. And marriages need rules, even if they are negotiated by the partners rather than imposed by tradition. If both spouses are to have the freedom to go where they please in the world, if they reject external limits on being exposed to temptation, they need the internal discipline to turn down those temptations. In other words, if a married woman works in an office around other men or if a married man finds himself in a barroom with other women, there are going to be opportunities to cheat. And when that happens, they "better start turnin' ‘em down."

To negotiate these new rules, to find that inner resolve, couples needed a different kind of marriage music, which meant a different kind of country music. That's exactly what Harris and Crowell were creating in the mid-‘70s--a new music in response to a new need in a new audience. That was In-Law Country, a music that abandoned the no-longer-credible certainties of the past and embraced the all-too-real ambiguities of the present. "It's a brave new wave we're roarin' in," Crowell sings over his nervous, anxious guitar figure, "... ain't nothin' easy any more."
The level of anxiety is even higher on the album's title track. "Ain't Living Long Like This" captures that feeling of living beyond your income and beyond the law and realizing your luck is finally running out. The lyrics combined semi-autobiography ("Grew up in Houston off of Wayside Drive;... all I remember was a drunk man's breath") with a sense of desperation ("He slipped the handcuffs on behind my back, then he left me freezing on a steel rail track"). But the desperation is communicated as much by Crowell's twitchy rhythm-guitar riff as by the words.

"I had been writing folkie balladeer things, but when I got to California I started writing differently," Crowell comments. "One of the first songs to come out of it was ‘Ain't Living Long Like This.' I was part of a rhythm section in a band, so some of the things I wrote for a good while became more rhythmic, given that that was my daily musical input. The language and the melody were still just as important, but the rhythm got underneath and became a part of it. The chord changes, though very simple, were more designed to be played by a group of musicians; it's not what you would call a troubadour song. It's one of my songs most performed live by other bands, just a good four-to-the-bar rock'n'roll song."

"Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight" is also marked by the rhythm of nervous desperation, but this time the protagonist is escaping a trap rather than falling into one. It's the story of Mary, a small-town Louisiana girl who so longs to escape her mama's house and the alligator-infested swamps that she runs off with the first "traveling man" to buy her drinks. With her shotgun-wielding daddy on their heels, the eloping couple drives down I-10 in the morning light, as eager to get away from what's behind them as to find out what's ahead. And that sense of motion is fueled as much by the lively Cajun two-step beat as by the lyrics.

The three outside songs on Ain't Living Long Like This included "Elvira," which at that point was a largely forgotten #72 1966 pop hit by its author, Dallas Frazier; "A Fool Such as I," a mainstream-pop standard popularized by Jo Stafford in 1953; and "I Thought I Heard You Callin' My Name," a #11 1957 country hit for Porter Wagoner. These were obviously stratagems to introduce an unknown artist to the country audience, but Crowell came up with such inventive arrangements that "Elvira" became a bluesy barroom sing-along; "A Fool Such as I" became a seductive honky-tonk crooner, and "I Thought I Heard You Callin' My Name" became an excuse for dizzying pop harmonies. The arrangement for "Elvira" was so effective, in fact, that three years later the Oak Ridge Boys borrowed it wholesale, sped it up a bit, and turned it into a chart-topping smash.

"Although they don't acknowledge it," Crowell told Billboard in 1990, "I know for a fact that it was [the source.] We went straight for the art of ‘Elvira, as opposed to the commerciality. I was much more interested in exploring the song and finding some source of soul in there, whereas making a hit record wasn't the first thing that came to mind."

Ain't Living Long Like This was an artistic triumph but a commercial dud. It got enthusiastic reviews from critics who had already embraced Harris, but Nashville was as wary of this unknown from California as it had been when Harris first emerged, and Crowell didn't meet them halfway the way his mentor had. Harris had been smart enough to separate Gram Parsons' artistic approach from his business approach; she absorbed his lessons about singing and songwriting but she disregarded his irresponsible approach to record labels, radio and live shows. She was determined to bring her music to a large audience, even if that meant being polite and reasonable with people she didn't particularly like.

Crowell, by contrast, accepted the iconoclastic model of his mentors, Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, as a package deal, swallowing the line that artistic integrity demanded stubbornness not just in songwriting and recording but in every aspect of one's life, especially in dealing with DJs and label execs who had little integrity themselves. Crowell's attitude didn't win him many friends, and it didn't win him much airplay or record sales either. As a result, Ain't Living Long Like This died an early death.

"When my first record came out, I ran off to Germany with Rosanne," Crowell confesses, "not paying attention to what was going on. That was an eye-opener when I came back and my manager Eddie Tickner said, ‘Well, your record came out and you were nowhere around to be found.' I said, ‘Oh, you mean, I might have to work the record?' Eddie said, ‘You want to start working on your second record?' I said, ‘What do you mean?' He said, ‘The first record has done what it's going to do.' I said, ‘You're fired.' It was my own blockhead fault, and I fired him.

Crowell replaced Tickner with a new manager, Mary Martin, the Canadian legend who put Harris together with Brian Ahearn and Bob Dylan with The Band. The songs on Crowell's first album may not have become hits for him, but they soon became hits for other folks. Both "Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight" and Crowell's arrangement of "Elvira" became #1 hits for the Oak Ridge Boys; "Ain't Living Long Like This" became a #1 hit for Waylon Jennings in 1980; "Voila! An American Dream" became a #13 pop single for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1980; "Song for the Life" was recorded by Jennings, John Denver, Jerry Jeff Walker, Alison Krauss, the Waterboys, Tony Rice, the Seldom Scene, Kathy Mattea and Johnny Cash, and became a #6 hit for Alan Jackson in 1995.

Within weeks of Crowell's phone call to her on her birthday, Cash had flown from Germany to California, just in time for the release of her step-sister's debut album.

"I got back to L.A. on the day of Carlene's record-release party," Cash told me in 1982, "after a long, awful flight from Munich. I was exhausted from customs and when I got to the apartment I was sharing with Rosey she wasn't there. I didn't have a key, so I broke a window, let myself in, took a shower, changed and went to the party at the Magic Shop. When I walked in, Rodney was sitting by the door. I sat down next to him and didn't move the whole night. He was no longer married, and we were together from that moment on. He started asking me to marry him. He'd ask me every day. I never said no, but I didn't think he was serious. But I finally said yes, and we got married in April."

That would be April 7, 1979, nearly a year after Carlene Carter's record-release party. The wedding occurred while Crowell and Cash were finishing the mixes on her first American album. Before that could happen, Cash had to get a record deal, record the album, and give up on her fling at acting school.

In 1988, a Village Voice reporter captured the following exchange between Crowell and Cash: "I didn't say much then," he told her, "but I was kind of resentful of you. I thought that you were given a chance to make records because you were Johnny Cash's daughter." "You didn't think I was talented?" Cash asked. "I thought you were talented," Crowell said, "but I didn't think you had paid your dues enough to make a record. You had never slugged it out. And if your closest friend and lover was judging you that way, just imagine how other people were." "People don't always pay dues in the same way," Cash countered. "There's no formal schedule of dues-paying, either. I just paid them in other ways."

She paid a lot of dues just by being Johnny Cash's daughter. She knew that Ariola had given her a contract only because she was a celebrity's kid. That had turned into a nightmarish experience. She sensed that Crowell was attracted to her in part for the same reason. She didn't want that to turn into another nightmare.

Ariola America had the first option to pick up Cash's album in the States, but they told her they didn't care about country music and weren't interested. Cash breathed a sigh of relief; she thought she was off the hook. But then she learned that her father had proudly pulled out the album for Rick Blackburn, the head of Columbia Records in Nashville, and had played it for him. Blackburn liked ‘Baby, You Better Start Turning Them Down' so much that he wanted to release it as a single. Rosanne and her new fiancée went to Blackburn and pleaded for the chance to re-cut the German track. Blackburn agreed, and those sessions turned into Cash's first American album.

"When Rick decided to sign me, I said, ‘Why not?'" Cash reflects. "Everyone I knew was making records: Emmylou Harris, Karen Brooks, Carlene and Rodney. They were songwriters and I was a songwriter, so I said, "I guess songwriters are making records now, so that's what I'll do.' I wanted to be part of that group. But to do that I had to come out of my shell. So I stopped being the shy, plump girl and became the cute girl."

Plump or cute, she still didn't have much music experience. She had sung a song or two as part of her daddy's road show, it's true, but she had never paid her dues in clubs, playing in a band or singing as a solo with her own guitar accompaniment. She was unsure of herself--and not without reason. Crowell's solution was to draft her into his band.

"Before I did Right or Wrong," Cash recalls, "I went out with Rodney and the Cherry Bombs. That was the first time I'd ever played in bars, because when I toured with my dad, it was in big halls, colleges and outdoor parks. I had never even sung at a coffeehouse or at school. That's why I still have terrible stage fright. So I finally got my feet dirty in some bars with Rodney. I was playing electric rhythm and singing back-up, and I was really bad, but Rodney never said anything. I was the only girl in the band and I was trying to play rhythm to Albert Lee. Eventually, I just turned my amp off, it was so intimidating.

"Even today I'm not a real good guitar player, so if I play on my albums, it's for the personality of it; it can be kind of sweet if I'm playing and singing at the same time. For a long time I wanted to be good on the guitar. Now I've gotten to the point where I can accompany myself and write songs on the guitar."

The Cherry Bombs--which also included Vince Gill, Emory Gordy, Tony Brown and Larrie Londin--were doing short jaunts up and down the West Coast. Between road trips, Crowell and Cash would book recording time in Brian Ahern's Enactron truck. The mobile studio was parked outside the Beverly Hills home leased by Ahern and his newlywed wife Harris. Crowell's 18-month-old daughter Hannah was often in a playpen in the truck; Crowell's old friends from the sessions for Harris's records or his solo debut would drop by to add parts. Occasionally Harris and Ahern themselves would pop in to help out.

Trying not to be cowed by the veteran musicians or the baby girl, Cash reached for the elusive confidence that might enable her to make the country-roots record she had wanted to make in Munich. On the other hand, making the album in L.A., 2,000 miles away from Nashville, gave her enough distance from her record company to try different things without a label executive pressuring her for a single or correcting her "American pronunciation."

"Making the first album was tense enough," Cash admits. "I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and Rodney didn't have a much better idea. All I knew was go for the emotions. And that's all I did. We both have pretty good ears for songs. We recorded a song called ‘The Winding Stream,' a beautiful old Carter Family song, but we decided not to go in that direction, because it was too hippie." She laughs. "It was during the making of that album that we stopped being hippies."

This would not be a hippie country record like those made by the Byrds, Poco or Commander Cody. This would not be a bohemian fling that treated country music as a quaint relic of the past, as a reminder of a vanished bucolic Eden. Cash knew country music too intimately for that sort of myth-making. She didn't realize it herself, but she was making a modern country record, an earnest look at the changing face of marriage and a serious shot at country-radio airplay. Perhaps it was being engaged to someone with an infant daughter, but Cash no longer saw herself as an aimless dilettante; now there was a direction, a purpose.

Once Crowell and Cash re-cut "Baby, Better Start Turnin' ‘Em Down," they decided to go ahead and re-do two more songs from the Ariola album: Keith Sykes' "Take Me, Take Me" and Crowell's "Anybody's Darlin' (Anything but Mine)." Those were the only three numbers from the German debut album that survived onto the first American album, Right or Wrong. Where these songs had once sounded like the underwhelming fumblings of an insecure singer trapped inside clumsy Euro-pop arrangements, they now resembled Emmylou Harris tracks as produced by Brian Ahern.

Crowell, who had learned how to be an arranger and producer by watching Ahern up close, filled out the rest of Cash's album by following the Ahern/Harris recipe: some songs by hip young country writers (Sykes' "Right or Wrong," Crowell's "Seeing's Believing," and Karen Brooks and Gary P. Nunn's "Couldn't Do Nothin' Right"), a trad-country standard (Johnny Cash's "Big River"), a duet with a trad-country figure (with Bobby Bare on Crowell's "No Memories Hangin' ‘Round"), and a left-field surprise (the calypso hit "Man Smart (Woman Smarter)"). Crowell even had Cash record the Beatles' "Not a Second Time," though it was included only on the European version of Right or Wrong.

Harris sang harmony on two tracks, and her current and former band members--Crowell, Skaggs, Lee, Emory Gordy Jr., Tony Brown, James Burton, John Ware, Hank DeVito, Glen D. Hardin and Frank Reckard--are all over the album.

"Brian created a style in Southern music, the fusion of rock and country," Crowell argues. "When I started making records with Rosanne, it was an extension of that. We recorded those records in the Enactron Truck with the same team of people, only with me guiding it. The fact that Emmylou's records became commercial and artistically successful at the same time stemmed from the fact that we didn't look at it commercially at all. When I started working with Rosanne, we took the same approach."

You can hear that approach on "Take Me, Take Me," which follows the Ahern philosophy of musical suggestion. The track has a sumptuous feel that reinforces Cash's swooning vocal of surrender to new love, yet it never feels cluttered or crowded as it did on the German version. How did Crowell pull that off? By restricting the basic backing tracks to electric piano, bass and hand percussion. There are no rattling cymbals or constantly strumming guitars to eat up all the available sonic space.

When Skaggs' fiddle, Lee's lead guitar, Mickey Raphael's harmonica or the Whites' vocal harmonies add romantic atmosphere, they do so by making a succinct statement and getting out, allowing the impression to linger without getting in the lead singer's way. And given all this room to operate, Cash relaxes and feels around for a strong, emotional performance.

The album, Right or Wrong, shared its title with Wanda Jackson's 1961 LP. The two albums were named after different songs, but Cash did share a feisty persona and a rockabilly impulse with her predecessor. When Cash sings Keith Sykes' "Right or Wrong," she's shoved along by a twitchy rhythm and by Reckard's expert imitation of a prickly, Robbie Robertson guitar figure. As she sings of her lover's indiscretions, she wrestles with the question of whether it's "right or wrong" to stay with him and concludes, "I don't know." But the pushy music implies that she can't put off a decision much longer.

A rockabilly tension pushes "Baby, Better Start Turnin' ‘Em Down" to a similar crisis point. In a world where wives and girl friends are no longer submissive, where sex is no longer dirty, and where conformity is no longer expected, the rules of relationships have to change and so do the songs. Crowell wrote the lyrics, but Cash gives them the lash of a whip when she tells a man that the new rules do not mean anything goes. If you're going to enjoy all the good sex and good talk of a relationship with her, buddy, you better start turning down invitations of sex from other women.

What you can hear on these tracks is the blossoming of Cash's untrained alto. She doesn't always have control of pitch or timbre, and she doesn't always sing with confidence. You can hear her falter on such cuts as "Couldn't Do Nothin' Right," "Seeing's Believing," "Big River," and the title track. But when she got comfortable in a groove and a key, she sang with previously untapped power. As she challenges a lover on "Baby, Better Start Turnin' ‘Em Down" or gives in to him on "Take Me, Take Me," she proves that the emotional impact of a vocal is far more important than technique.

"In my mind it was all pretense," Cash says. "I was pretending to be a singer. I knew I didn't have the real, live ability. I had no sense of my voice or how to place it or how to get around its limitations. I was at the mercy of my voice. If it was working a little bit, I was really happy; if it wasn't, I didn't know what to do. I had a gut feeling about what I wanted, and I just found it by feel."

"I zeroed in on the sound of her voice," Crowell remembers. "She had inherited a tone in her voice from her father. Hers is real sweet when she doesn't sing too hard; it has her father's resonance. When she's in a comfortable musical environment, that's a real cool sounding voice. I started to believe in her and started to collaborate with her and push her. She was very shy, but in an innocent way. I said, ‘Try this. Do this.' It caught on, and she began to grow in confidence."

"I never would have done half the things I've done without Rodney," Cash says. "He had so much more confidence in me than I had. He had an unshakeable faith in me. So many times I felt, ‘I can't do this. I should do something else. I should just stay home.' But he was unfaltering in his faith. If for nothing else, I'll owe him for that for the rest of my life."

What was missing from the album was Cash's songwriting. She had three times as many original compositions on her German debut as she does on her first American album. It was an unexpected development for someone who thought of herself as more of a writer than a singer. Crowell, though, was approaching her as Ahern had approached Harris--as an interpretive singer of a new kind of country music. Crowell altered his approach only when he heard the one Rosanne composition that made the final version of Right or Wrong.

"She wrote a song called ‘This Has Happened Before,' played it for me and I was stunned," Crowell recalls. "She possessed a kind of melancholy, some of that Lennonesque melancholy, like ‘You've Got to Hide Your Love Away.' She had that. Her father had properly schooled her in what a good song was. When I heard those songs, I said, ‘Wait a minute, there's more here.'"

"This Has Happened Before" is a ballad sung by a woman on the day after a big argument with her lover. She finds that last night's anger has changed to sadness in the morning and that by evening sadness has changed into a longing for that man. What's remarkable about the song is the way it refuses to decide which of those three emotions is the correct one.

The lyrics draw a skillful analogy with the rain and wind, suggesting that any long-term relationship will cycle through these feelings like the weather. And the notes, pitched low and delivered slow and rounded, suggest the sobering epiphany of a young woman who has just glimpsed the patterns of her own life. "This has happened before," she sings, implying that it will probably happen again. It's an astonishingly mature insight for a 23-year-old woman, and it hinted at depths that would only be revealed later.

Cash had a similar epiphany in her personal life around the same time. She realized that the best way to escape the suffocating complications of her parents' extended families was to start one of her own. The resentment over her father's traveling, the competition with her stepsister, all that energy could be diverted to her new husband and stepdaughter.

"I asked him not long ago; I said, ‘If I had been you, I would have had severe reservations about marrying me,'" Cash told Country Rhythms Magazine in 1982. "And he said, ‘Well, I did at first,' just because my family is so intense. They all are--all of them. I can't explain to you how intense all of the back and forth is--the little things that go on. And he said, ‘Yeah,' and you know he separated me from that.

"Besides we were really in love. When you marry and have you own family that naturally helps you get a distance from it. I don't need to be enmeshed in all the goings-on of my sisters and my parents. I have to put that energy into my kids. We really make a conscious effort to stay out of it. You can't lead their lives for them."

The wedding took place while Right or Wrong was being finished, and the new marriage soon gave birth to a new record.

"I turned the album in," Cash says. "and they said, ‘This is a country record.' I said, ‘No, it's a pop record, like the Eagles or the Byrds. I know what country music is, and this isn't it.' I thought I was signed to Columbia, not Columbia Nashville."

Cash was mistaken. Right or Wrong was a new kind of country music, but it was country music nonetheless. It was relationship music even if it described a new kind of romance founded on equal sharing rather than prescribed gender roles. She can't stay with a man who thinks she "Couldn't Do Nothin' Right." Because if it's "Man Smart," it's also "Woman Smarter." But she's not interested in fleeting affairs; she wants something that will endure. She may like a man, but is he "Right or Wrong" for the long haul? Her baby "Better Start Turnin' ‘Em Down" if their relationship's going to last. Promises aren't enough; only "Seeing's Believing." But if he's willing to make and keep a long-term commitment, she'll invite him to "Take Me, Take Me."

In other words, this is marriage music, not dating music. It's country music, not rock'n'roll. Crowell understood that. That's why he insisted that his new girl friend sing her father's country standard, "Big River." That's why he insisted that she sing a duet with her father's old friend Bobby Bare. That's why he surrounded her with Ricky Skaggs' mandolin, Hank DeVito's steel guitar and hillbilly harmonies. That's why he emphasized the wounded Southern drawl in her voice. He intuited that her commercial prospects were much better if she followed Emmylou Harris's path into country radio than if she followed Linda Ronstadt's path into pop radio.

Crowell's intuition was correct. The first single, "No Memories Hangin' ‘Round," landed at #17 in 1979. The second and third singles, "Couldn't Do Nothin' Right" and "Take Me, Take Me," rose to #15 and #25, respectively, in 1980. It wasn't a spectacular triumph, but it was a good start. It was certainly a better showing than Crowell's debut or any of Guy Clark's RCA records, which had all failed to yield a Top 40 single.

"With the insouciance of a 23-year-old," Cash says, "I thought my songs would go straight to the top of the charts. Emmy had been so successful that we thought we'd all be that successful. We were shocked when Rodney's first album flopped."

Crowell had proven that the Ahern production formula could be adapted by other producers and applied to other singers with artistic success. Cash had proven that another artist could have at least modest success with that formula. Now the couple was faced with the challenge of transforming their promising American debut albums into careers--and their songs about marriage into an actual marriage.

ALBUMS MENTIONED IN THIS ESSAY:

Carlene Carter (Warner Bros. BSK-3201, 1978) For her first album, this heiress of country royalty crossed the Atlantic to record with the Rumour, the backing band for pub-rock hero Graham Parker. Bob Andrews and Brinsley Schwarz, the Rumour's keyboardist and guitarist, produced an album that was more rock than country and more tentative than assured. The highlights were Rodney Crowell's "Never Together but Close Sometimes" and Parker's "Between You and Me." Carter's own songwriting was still under-developed though her voice already had an appealing spark. Parker and Nick Lowe both make guest appearances. Grade: B-

Rosanne Cash (Ariola 26096 XOT, 1978) Before she made her American debut, Cash recorded this album for a German label. She has since disowned it, but it's not nearly as embarrassing as Emmylou Harris' debut. Eight tracks were recorded in Munich with producer Bernie Vonficht and arranger Charly Ricanek, and three were recorded in Nashville with arranger Rodney Crowell. The songwriting isn't bad (three tunes by Cash herself, one by her dad, two by Crowell and one apiece by Keith Sykes and John Fogerty) and the singer already has that plush, bruised vocal tone that would make her famous. What she doesn't have yet is much sense of rhythm or phrasing, so the album becomes too amorphous. Grade: C

Rosanne Cash: Right Or Wrong (Columbia PC 36155, 1979) Cash's U.S. debut contains only one of her own compositions, so the emphasis is on her abilities as an interpretive singer. She does not yet have the full-throated confidence she would have just a year later (and neither does Crowell's country-pop production), but already you can hear the paradoxical blend of modern feminist strength and traditional romantic vulnerability that would make her such a special artist. There are four songs by Crowell, two by Keith Sykes, one by Johnny Cash, a duet with Bobby Bare and vocal harmonies by Crowell, Skaggs, Harris and the Whites. Grade: B

Rosanne Cash: Black Cadillac (Capitol CDP 0946 3 43381 2 7, 2006) Cash wrote these 13 songs in the two-year period between the 2003 deaths of her stepmother June Carter and father Johnny Cash and the 2005 death of her mother Vivian Liberto. As expected the songs are slow, moody and ruminative, wrapped in elegant chamber-pop by producers Bill Bottrell and John Leventhal (who each handled half the songs). What's unexpected is how stubbornly Rosanne resists the conventional sentimentality of grieving for the dead. Instead she digs for the anger, sorrow, resentment, affection, lust and hope that always surround parents and their children. Emerging from this tangle of conflicted emotions is one of the truest portraits of an adult mourning a parent and one of the best albums of her career. Grade: A

Rodney Crowell: Ain't Living Long Like This (Warner Bros. BSK-3228, 1978) Crowell's debut is essentially an attempt to make an Emmylou Harris album with a male lead singer. Harris, her band and her producer/husband Brian Ahern are all on hand to make it work--and it does, thanks to five of Crowell's finest songs (most notably "Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight," "Voila an American Dream," "Song for the Life" and the title track) as well as his strong vocals over sparkling country-rock arrangements. The three cover tunes are blatant bids for country-radio airplay, but they work too. Guests include Willie Nelson, Ry Cooder and Ricky Skaggs, but the nine-song album is a bit skimpy. Grade: B+

Rodney Crowell: Sex and Gasoline (Work Song/Yep Roc 2187, 2008)  "If I could have just one wish," Crowell sings, "maybe for an hour, I'd want to be a woman, and feel that phantom power." He has always been at his best when pushing against the boundaries of gender stereotypes--not so much on pontificating manifestos like this song ("The Rise and Fall of Intelligent Design") and the title track, more so on the lusty rockers and tender ballads which have supplied his biggest hits and which fill out the rest of this disc. Backed by L.A.'s best country-rock musicians and produced for the first time by Joe Henry, Crowell admires a dominating woman on "Funky and the Farmboy," dissects a sexual triangle on "I Want You #35," confesses his own faults on "Truth Decay" (a duet with Phil Everly) and despairs for an affair on "I've Done Everything" (a duet with Henry). Best of all is the gorgeous valentine, "The Night's Just Right." Grade: B+

Emmylou Harris: Pieces Of The Sky (Reprise MS 2213, 1975) Though it's her second album (and her fourth if you count her two collaborations with Gram Parsons), this is widely and justly considered Harris' true debut, for it's the first time her distinctive pop-country approach emerges. Producer Brian Ahern constructs gorgeous arrangements of well chosen songs to showcase her incandescent voice. The album includes her first country hit (the Louvin Brothers' "If I Could Only Win Your Love"), her first Rodney Crowell cover ("Bluebird Wine"), her first Dolly Parton connection (a cover of "Coat of Many Colors"), her first rock'n'roll cover (the Beatles' "For No One") and her indelible elegy for Gram Parsons ("Boulder to Birmingham"). Grade: A

Emmylou Harris: Elite Hotel (Reprise MS 2236, 1975) This album suggests what the Flying Burrito Brothers might have sounded like if Harris had been in charge. The same mix of honky-tonk songs and a rock'n'roll rhythm section are at work, but instead of the hippie sloppiness there's a polished precision. There are three Gram Parsons compositions as well as two Rodney Crowell tunes in the same vein. The album is fleshed out with tunes by Hank Williams, George Jones, the Louvin Brothers, Buck Owens and the Beatles. Elvis Presley's James Burton and Glen D. Hardin are on hand to make it sound great. Grade: A+

Emmylou Harris: Luxury Liner (Warner Bros. BS 2998, 1977) Harris repeats the formula of her previous two albums--a Louvin Brothers classic, a couple of Gram Parsons songs, a couple of Rodney Crowell songs, a rock'n'roll remake (this time Chuck Berry instead of the Beatles) and some country oldies (this time by the Carter Family and Conway Twitty). It's no longer fresh and the songs seem like second choices, but for the most part it still works. Grade: B

Emmylou Harris: Quarter Moon In A Ten Cent Town (Warner Bros. BSK-3141, 1978) Harris stays close to the formula again, but this time she includes one of Rodney Crowell's best songs ("Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight" with help from the Band) and one of Dolly Parton's best ("To Daddy"). Throw in a pair of strong Jesse Winchester tunes, Delbert McClinton's rocking tribute to wine and Utah Phillips' lovely tribute to West Virginia, and you can excuse the weaker cuts. Susanna Clark co-wrote the lead-off track with Carlene Carter and painted the album cover. Grade: B+

Emmylou Harris: Blue Kentucky Girl (Warner Bros. BSK-3318, 1979) Having broken into the country charts with non-traditional country music, Harris decided to try her hand at the real stuff. Tackling material associated with Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Jean Ritchie and the Louvin Brothers with old-fashioned arrangements, Harris proved herself a natural, capturing that tension between working-class yearning and Christian fatalism that fuels the best country music. Rodney Crowell wrote a song and played guitar; Ricky Skaggs played fiddle; the Whites sang harmony; Brian Ahern produced, and Don Everly and Tanya Tucker sang duets. The result was three more top-10 country hits. Grade: A-

Emmylou Harris: All I Intended To Be (Nonesuch 480444-2, 2008) Harris possesses one of the most seductive sopranos in American music, but that voice needs melodies to thrive, just as a car needs gasoline. And in the latter part of her career, due to the shortcomings of her own songwriting and to her fascination with Daniel Lanois-inspired atmospherics, she has often starved her own voice. This is her first full-album project with her ex-husband and best producer, Brian Ahern, since 1983, but he too often gives in to her new love of ambiance. Despite these weaknesses, there are some terrific cuts here, especially when she allows Ahern to return to his old bluegrass-pop sound and when she engages her fellow vocalists in give-and-take harmonies. That's true on the two songs that Harris co-wrote and co-sings with Kate and Anna McGarrigle, on the Billy Joe Shaver and Merle Haggard classics that Harris sings with John Starling of the Seldom Scene and on Harris's own "Gold," which finds Harris singing with Dolly Parton and, in Linda Ronstadt's role, Vince Gill. Grade: B

Mary Kay Place: Aimin' To Please (Columbia 34908, 1977) In an attempt to establish herself as a legitimate progressive-country artist and not just a novelty act, Place hired Emmylou Harris's whole team--producer Brian Ahern, songwriters Rodney Crowell and Emory Gordy, musicians Albert Lee, James Burton, Hank DeVito, John Ware and Glen D. Hardin and Harris herself on harmonies--and asked them to make her second album in Harris's style. Neither the songwriting--which emphasized sassy, uptempo, tongue-in-cheek numbers--nor the singing was up to Harris's standards, but it came close enough to be an enjoyable, respectable In-Law Country record. It included a Top Ten single (a Willie Nelson duet on Bobby Braddock's "Something To Brag About") and an arrangement of the Drifters' "Save the Last Dance for Me" that Harris turned into a #4 hit the next year. Nonetheless, this was Place's last record. Grade: B-

Mary Kay Place: The Ahern Sessions: 1976-1977 (Raven, 2001) This CD reissue collects all twenty tracks from Place's two albums. Grade: B-