Look up us in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

US or U.S. usually refers to the United States of America, a country in North America.

US, U.S. or us may also refer to:

Language[link]

• we, us is the objective case of we in English

Geography[link]

• Us, Val-d'Oise, France

Education[link]

• University of Salford, a university in the UK
• University of Salzburg, a university in Austria
• University of Seville, a university in Spain
• Université de Sherbrooke, a university in Canada
• University School, a private all-boys day school in Hunting Valley, Ohio, United States
• University of Sussex, a university in the UK

Music[link]

• Us (Peter Gabriel album)
• Us (Mull Historical Society album)
• Us (Brother Ali album)
• "Us" (Regina Spektor song)
• Us, a 1974 album by Maceo Parker
• "Us", a song by Ice Cube from Death Certificate
• "Us", a song by Céline Dion from Let's Talk About Love
• "US", a song by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks from Pig Lib
• Urban Symphony, an Estonian music group

Other uses[link]

• U.S., used in legal citations to refer to the United States Reports
• Union of Russia and Belarus
• US Airways' IATA designator
• Us Weekly, an American celebrity magazine
• Us (TV movie)
• .us, Internet TLD of the United States of America
• US, Ultrasonic, Ultrasound
• Urgences-Santé, an ambulance company in Montréal, Qc, Canada

See also[link]

• µs, microsecond
• United Services Club or US Club, a golf club in Mumbai
• United States (disambiguation)
• Uz (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Regina Spektor
Regina Spektor playing an electronic piano in 2006
Background information
Native name	Реги́нa Ильи́нична Спе́ктор
Born	(1980-02-18) February 18, 1980 (age 32) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Origin	New York, U.S.
Genres	Anti-folk, indie rock, baroque pop, blues, pop
Occupations	Singer, songwriter, record producer
Instruments	Piano, vocals, guitar, bass guitar
Years active	1999–present
Labels	Sire/Warner Bros. Records
Associated acts	Sondre Lerche, Ben Folds, Kill Kenada, the Strokes, Dufus
Website	http://www.reginaspektor.com
Notable instruments
Steinway & Sons piano Epiphone Wildkat guitar Regina Spektor's Autograph

Regina Ilyinichna Spektor (Russian: Реги́нa Ильи́нична Спе́ктор, IPA: [rʲɪˈɡʲinə ˈspʲɛktər], English: /rɨˈdʒiːnə ˈspɛktər/; born February 18, 1980) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. Her music is associated with the anti-folk scene centered in New York City's East Village.

Early life[link]

Spektor was born in Moscow, Soviet Union in 1980 to a musical Russian Jewish family. Her father, Ilya Spektor, is a photographer and amateur violinist. Her mother, Bella Spektor, was a music professor in a Soviet college of music and now teaches at a public elementary school in Mount Vernon, New York.^[1] She has a brother Barry (Bear), who was featured in track 7, "* * *", or "Whisper", of her 2004 album, Soviet Kitsch.

She learned how to play piano by practising on a Petrof upright that was given to her mother by her grandfather.^[2] She was also exposed to the music of rock and roll bands such as The Beatles, Queen, and The Moody Blues by her father, who obtained such recordings in Eastern Europe and traded cassettes with friends in the Soviet Union.^[1] The family left the Soviet Union in 1989, when Regina was nine and a half, during the period of Perestroika, when Soviet citizens were permitted to emigrate. Regina had to leave her piano behind.^[3] The seriousness of her piano studies led her parents to consider not leaving the USSR, but they finally decided to emigrate, due to the ethnic and political discrimination that Jews faced.^[4] Spektor is fluent in Russian and reads Hebrew, and has since paid tribute to her Russian heritage, quoting the poem February by the Russian poet Boris Pasternak in her song Après Moi, and stating “I’m very connected to the language and the culture.”^[5]

Traveling first to Austria and then Italy, the family was admitted to the United States as refugees with the assistance of HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) and settled in The Bronx, where Spektor graduated from the SAR Academy, a Jewish day middle school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. She then attended high school for two years at the Frisch School, a yeshiva in Paramus, New Jersey, but transferred to a public school, Fair Lawn High School, in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where she finished the last two years of her high school education.^[6]

Career[link]

In New York, Spektor studied classical piano with Sonia Vargas, a professor at the Manhattan School of Music, until she was 17; Spektor's father had met Vargas through her husband, violinist Samuel Marder.^[7] Although the family had been unable to bring their piano from Russia, Spektor found a piano on which to play in the basement of her synagogue, and also practiced on tabletops and other hard surfaces.

Spektor was originally interested only in classical music, but later became interested in hip hop, rock and punk as well.^[1] Although she had always made up songs around the house, Spektor first became interested in more formal songwriting during a visit to Israel with the Nesiya Institute in her teenage years when she attracted attention from the other children on the trip for the songs she made up while hiking and realized she had an aptitude for songwriting.^[4]

Following this trip, she was exposed to the work of Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco, and other singer-songwriters, which encouraged her belief that she could create her own songs.^[4] She wrote her first a cappella songs around the age of 16 and her first songs for voice and piano when she was nearly 18.^[1]

Spektor completed the four-year studio composition program of the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College within three years, graduating with honors in 2001. Around this time, she also worked briefly at a butterfly farm in Luck, Wisconsin,^[8] and studied in Tottenham, ( a suburb of London) for one semester ^[9].

She gradually achieved recognition through performances in the anti-folk scene in downtown New York City, often as a duo with drummer Anders Griffen, and most importantly at the East Village's Sidewalk Cafe, but also at the Living Room, Tonic, Fez, the Knitting Factory, and CB's Gallery.^{[citation needed]} She also performed at local colleges (such as Sarah Lawrence College) with other musicians, including the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. She sold self-published CDs at her performances during this period: 11:11 (2001) and Songs (2002). In 2004, she signed a contract with Warner Brothers' record label Sire Records to publish and distribute her third album Soviet Kitsch, originally self-released in 2003.

Spektor is married to Jack Dishel, guitarist with the band The Moldy Peaches.^[9]

Style[link]

Regina Spektor in concert, April 2007.

Spektor has said that she has created a great number of songs,^[10] but that she rarely writes any of them down. She has also stated that she never aspired to write songs herself, but songs seem to just flow to her.^[11] Spektor's songs are not usually autobiographical, but rather are based on scenarios and characters drawn from her imagination.^[4][12] Her songs show influences from folk,^[13][14] punk, rock, Jewish,^[12][15] Russian,^[12] hip hop,^[13][16][17] jazz,^[13][16] and classical music.^[12][16] Spektor has said that she works hard to ensure that each of her songs has its own musical style, rather than trying to develop a distinctive style for her music as a whole.^[11]

It doesn't feel natural for me to write some diary type song. I want to write a classic like Yesterday but weird songs about meatballs in refrigerators come into my head - I can't help it.^[18]

Spektor has a broad vocal range and uses the full extent of it. She also explores a variety of different and somewhat unorthodox vocal techniques, such as verses composed entirely of buzzing noises made with the lips and beatbox-style flourishes in the middle of ballads, and also makes use of such unusual musical techniques as using a drum stick to tap rhythms on the body of the piano or chair.^[4][19] Part of her style also results from the exaggeration of certain aspects of vocalization, most notably the glottal stop, which is prominent in the single "Fidelity". She also uses a strong New York accent on some words, which she has said is due to her love of New York and its culture.^[1]

Her lyrics are equally eclectic, often taking the form of abstract narratives or first-person character studies, similar to short stories or vignettes put to song.^[1][19] Spektor usually sings in English, though she sometimes includes a few words or verses of Latin, Russian, French, and other languages in her songs. She also plays with pronunciations, which she said on a NPR interview to be a remnant of her early years when she listened to pop in English without understanding the lyrics. Some of Spektor's lyrics include literary allusions,^[4] such as to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in "Poor Little Rich Boy", The Little Prince in "Baobabs", Virginia Woolf and Margaret Atwood in "Paris", Ezra Pound and William Shakespeare in "Pound of Flesh", Shakespeare's Hamlet in "The Virgin Queen", Boris Pasternak in "Après Moi", Samson and Delilah in "Samson", and Oedipus the King in "Oedipus", Billie Holiday in "Lady" and Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome in "2.99 cent blues". She alludes to The Beatles and Paul McCartney in the song "Edit". She also used a line from Joni Mitchell's California in her song "The Devil Came to Bethlehem". Recurring themes and topics in Spektor's lyrics include love, death, religion (particularly Biblical and Jewish references), city life (particularly New York references), and certain key phrases have been known to recur in different songs by Spektor, such as references to gravediggers, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the name "Mary Ann". Spektor's use of satire is evident in "Wasteside," which refers to The Twelve Chairs, the classic satirical novel by the Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov, and describes the town in which people are born, get their hair cut, and then are sent to the cemetery.

In Spektor's early albums, many of her tracks had a very dry vocal production, with very little reverb or delay added. However, Spektor's more recent albums, particularly Begin to Hope, have put more emphasis into song production and have relied more on traditional pop and rock instruments.^[3] Spektor says the records that most impact her are those of "bands whose music is really involved",^[20] specifically naming The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, Radiohead, Tom Waits, and Frédéric Chopin as primary influences.^[20][21]

In her songs, "Eet", "Us" and "Après Moi" the titular sounds are used as the focal point throughout. (In "Dance Anthem of the 80's", the sound "eet" is also used often, on words such as "meat", "street", and "eat").

Performances[link]

Regina Spektor at her first performance in Tel Aviv, Israel on March 3, 2007

Spektor's first nationwide tour was accompanying The Strokes as the opening act on their 2003–2004 Room on Fire tour, during which she and the band performed and recorded "Modern Girls & Old Fashion Men". Kings of Leon were the second opening act on that tour, and they invited Regina to open for them on their own European tour right after The Strokes tour. In June 2005, Spektor was the opening act for the English piano rock band Keane on their North American tour, during which she performed at Radio City Music Hall on June 7, 2005.^[22] During her 2006 headlining tour in support of the Begin to Hope album, Spektor sold out a performance at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, and two shows at Town Hall Theater in New York City on September 27 and September 28, 2006.^[23]

Spektor has appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (once), Late Night with Conan O'Brien (three times), The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (twice), Jimmy Kimmel Live (twice), Last Call with Carson Daly (five times), Late Show with David Letterman (twice), Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (twice), CBS News Sunday Morning, Good Morning America (twice), Australia's Rove Live, and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (twice).^[24] On October 10, 2009 she performed on Saturday Night Live.

Since January 2005, Spektor has performed on a bright red Baldwin baby grand piano.^[25] At the present time she uses exclusively Steinway & Sons pianos. She plays a seafoam Epiphone Wildkat archtop hollow-body electric guitar.^[26]

Although she generally only performs original material, Spektor occasionally performs covers. Most famous of these covers were her performances of songs by Leonard Cohen and Madonna, for the 2nd Annual Jewish Music & Heritage Festival at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.^[4] In 2006 and 2007, Spektor embarked on a headlining tour of the U.S. and Europe, selling out numerous clubs and theaters. She covered John Lennon's "Real Love" at the performance arts center of her alma mater, State University of New York at Purchase, on March 28, 2007, at a benefit concert for the Conservatory of Music.^[27] In 2007, Spektor recorded "Real Love" for the Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur CD, which was released in June of that year. She recorded a version of the song for Triple J's Like a Version radio segment which was shown on jTV.

Regina Spektor performing in Brighton on October 26, 2006.

On March 8, 2007, Spektor appeared on the British ITV network's Loose Women, promoting and performing "Fidelity" live, and on April 20, 2007, she performed on the Late Show with David Letterman. On Saturday, April 28, 2007, she appeared at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. On Friday, May 18, 2007, she appeared on BBC1's Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. On June 16, 2007, she performed at the Bonnaroo Music Festival and later performed at the 2007 Lollapalooza on August 4, 2007 and Virgin Festival on August 5, 2007 in Baltimore, Maryland. On September 16, 2007, she performed at the Austin City Limits Music Festival and recorded a set for the Austin City Limits TV show the following day. She performed acoustic at the Bridge School Benefit at Shoreline Amphitheatre on October 27 and October 28, 2007.

On November 14, 2007, at her concert at Ryman Auditorium, in Nashville, it was announced that Spektor collapsed during the sound check and was taken to a local emergency room. According to the statement given to the audience, Spektor was fine, but doctors said that she could not perform that night. It was later reported that the cause of the collapse was an inner ear infection which caused intense vertigo. The show was initially rescheduled for December 6, 2007,^[28] but the date was once again rescheduled, and the concert finally occurred on February 29, 2008.^[29] After her initial collapse in Nashville, she was able to perform in concerts at Mountain Stage on November 18, 2007,^{[30][citation needed]} and at Duke University on November 19, 2007.^[31]

In conjunction with the release of her 2009 album Far, Spektor was headlining at Serpentine Sessions, a series of concerts London's Hyde Park on June 29, 2009. Other European performances in 2009 include Glastonbury Festival, Hultsfred Festival, Oxegen 2009, T in the Park, Paradiso (Amsterdam), Latitude Festival, and Rock Werchter. Spektor has invited Brooklyn-based rock band Jupiter One to open concerts on her 2009 North American tour. As a part of that tour, on October 14, 2009 Spektor headlined a concert at the Radio City Music Hall in NYC.

On July 7, 2010, Regina performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland.^[32] Her cellist, Dan Cho, drowned the day before while swimming in Lake Geneva near the Chillon Castle.^[33][34] She was described as distraught, shaken, and in tears and took several breaks to regain her composure.^[35]

Media coverage[link]

Spektor performing at the Hammerstein Ballroom on October 16, 2007

Regina Spektor performing in the West London Synagogue, February 2007.

Since 2005, Spektor's music has been used in various television programs and commercials. In late 2005 "Us" (from Soviet Kitsch) was used in a commercial as part of the What Do You Want To Watch? series for the United Kingdom's British Sky Broadcasting. The advert features a clip from a documentary on skateboarder Danny Way. In the summer of 2006, a clip from "Us" was used for the teaser website for Microsoft's Zune project at ComingZune.com, as well as for a promotional campaign for MtvU. The same track is used by Dutch telecom company KPN in a commercial. "Somedays" was used in a 2005 episode of CSI: NY and "Samson" was used in a 2006 episode of the same series. "On the Radio" was used in an episode of ABC's Grey's Anatomy. "Field Below" was used in a 2006 episode titled "The Last Word" of CBS's Criminal Minds. "Fidelity" has also been used in an episode of Grey's Anatomy titled "Six Days, Part 2", Veronica Mars titled "Wichita Linebacker", Brothers & Sisters titled "Sexual Politics", during the end credits of Love and Other Drugs, and in the Brazilian telenovela A Favorita. "Better" is currently being used in a commercial for XM Satellite Radio, an episode of "How I Met Your Mother", and the popular film My Sister's Keeper. Her song "Music Box" is currently being used in a commercial for JC Penney. Spektor also sang the title song "Little Boxes" of Showtime's television series Weeds in the episode "Mile Deep and a Foot Wide" (2006) and her "Ghost of Corporate Future" was used both at the beginning and end of the episode.^[36] On January 21, 2007, she was featured on CBS News Sunday Morning.^[11]

Spektor received increased attention in 2006 when her video for "Fidelity" was viewed over 200,000 times in two days on YouTube. On Sirius Radio's Left of Center channel, her single "Fidelity" was voted by listeners as the #1 song of 2006. Towards the end of 2006, VH1 showcased her as part of their "You Oughta Know: Artists on the Rise" featurettes: they played clips from the "Fidelity" music video and showed parts of an interview with Spektor during commercial breaks on the channel.^[37] Spektor's video for "Fidelity" reached #3 on VH1's Top 20 Countdown.^{[citation needed]}

Peter Gabriel recorded a version of "Après Moi" on his 2010 release Scratch My Back.

In Australia, Spektor's music has rapidly gained popularity in mainstream culture primarily due to Begin to Hope being played on the nation-wide radio station Triple J, where it eventually became a feature album. Prior to Begin to Hope, Spektor had only a small following in Australia in comparison to the US and Europe.

Spektor reached #33 on Blender magazine's top 100 of 2006 and was also listed as one of the "Hottest Women of...Rock!".^[38] "Fidelity" was also used in a 2007 television commercial in New Zealand advertising Yahoo!Xtra, a new partnership between Yahoo! and Telecom's Xtra ISP. Also in 2007, the mobile phone company Vodafone used her lyric, "Come into my world..." from the track, "Hotel Song" on Begin to Hope, in an extensive TV advertising campaign in the UK and Ireland.

On October 1, 2007, Spektor's new video for "Better" was released on VH1 and YouTube, where it was viewed more than 100,000 times within the first 24 hours. "Fidelity" was used in the trailer for the film 27 Dresses, released on October 3, 2007.^[39]

Her song "The Call" appeared prominently in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,^[40] as part of the film's finale sequence. Spektor's song "Better" was used in the movie My Sister's Keeper, loosely based on the novel of the same name by Jodi Picoult. A section of "That Time" was featured in the film In Bruges. Additionally, "Us" and "Hero" are both featured on the soundtrack for the film (500) Days of Summer. Spin magazine profiled Spektor in their July 2009 issue, where she discussed her just-released album Far. The story was released in their digital edition that month, as well.^[41] In August 2009, the song "Two Birds" was used in the 2009 Fall Campaign of the Polish TV station TVN. Also Regina's song "Eet" debuted on the show 90210 in April 2010.

On September 16, 2009, it was announced that Spektor would write the music for the musical Beauty, a modern adaptation of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, which is set to open during the 2011–12 Broadway season.^[42]

In May 2010, Spektor performed for President Obama and his wife Michelle along with hundreds of other guests at the White House reception in honor of Jewish Heritage Month. She sang "Us" and "The Sword & the Pen", receiving a standing ovation begun by Michelle Obama.

The song "Human of the Year" featured prominently in the trailer and first episode of the 2011 HBO series Enlightened.

The song "All the Rowboats" was featured on The CW's Ringer in March 2012.

The Song "Hotel Song" was featured in the opening of the movie Friends with Kids.

Philanthropy[link]

In 2007, she covered John Lennon's "Real Love" for Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur. The following year, she participated in Songs for Tibet, an initiative to support the human rights situation in Tibet and the 14th Dalai Lama. The album was issued on August 5, 2008, via iTunes and on August 19 in music stores around the world.^[43] On January 22, 2009, Spektor performed at the third annual Roe On The Rocks gig at the Bowery Ballroom to raise money for Planned Parenthood New York City.^[44] Also, continuing with her support for Tibet, Regina Spektor played for Tibet House's annual concert at Carnegie Hall on February 26, 2010. Less than one month later, on March 23, 2010, Spektor gave a concert at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza in New York City to raise funds for the work of Doctors Without Borders in Haiti. Also, on April 27, she released a cover of Radiohead's song "No Surprises" with all proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders to help the earthquake victims in Haiti and Chile.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• 2001: 11:11
• 2002: Songs
• 2004: Soviet Kitsch
• 2006: Begin to Hope
• 2009: Far
• 2012: What We Saw from the Cheap Seats

Singles[link]

Awards[link]

• Begin to Hope – Shortlist Music Prize (nominated)
• Studio8's Female Voice of August 2009 (won)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Regina Spektor

• Official site
• Regina Spektor at the Internet Movie Database
• Regina Spektor at the Open Directory Project
• "Regina Spektor" interview by Noel Murray (from The A.V. Club, 21 June 2006)
• Interview from Soundcheck, WNYC, 13 September 2005
• Interview from All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 28 June 2006
• Strangers Almanac Column on Regina Spektor from Glide Magazine
• NPR - All Songs Considered 7/22/2009 - Regina Spektor: When Every Sound Sings
• NPR All Things Considered 5/24/2012 - Regina Spektor Still Doesn't Write Anything Down

Emmylou Harris
Emmylou Harris at the Greenbelt Harvest Picnic, 2011
Background information
Born	(1947-04-02) April 2, 1947 (age 65) Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.
Genres	Folk, country rock, country, bluegrass, rock, pop, alt-country
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician
Instruments	Voice, guitar
Years active	1970–present
Labels	Jubilee, Reprise, Warner Bros., Elektra, Asylum, Rhino, Nonesuch
Associated acts	Ryan Adams The Band Bright Eyes James Burton Beth Neilsen Chapman Earl Thomas Conley Elvis Costello Rodney Crowell Iris Dement John Denver Dixie Chicks Bob Dylan Steve Earle Vern Gosdin Patty Griffin Arlo Guthrie Mark Knopfler Albert Lee Little Feat Dave Matthews Kate and Anna McGarrigle Willie Nelson Juice Newton Roy Orbison Gram Parsons Dolly Parton John Prine Linda Ronstadt Ricky Skaggs Bruce Springsteen Don Williams Lucinda Williams Neil Young Warren Zevon
Website	www.emmylouharris.com

Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She has released many chart-topping albums and singles over the course of her career, and has won 12 Grammys and numerous other awards.

In addition to her work as a solo artist and bandleader, both as an interpreter of other composers' works and as a singer-songwriter, she is a sought-after backing vocalist and duet partner, working with numerous other artists including Gram Parsons, The Band, Linda Ronstadt, Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, Mark Knopfler, Guy Clark, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Rodney Crowell, and Neil Young.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Emmylou Harris is the daughter of a career military family, her father, Walter Harris, was a military officer and her mother, Eugenia was a wartime military wife. Her father, a member of the Marine Corps, was reported missing in action in Korea in 1952 and spent ten months as a prisoner of war. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Harris spent her childhood in North Carolina and Woodbridge, Virginia, where she graduated from Gar-Field Senior High School as class valedictorian. In high school she also won a drama scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she began to study music seriously, learning to play the songs of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez on guitar. Leaving college to pursue her musical aspirations, she moved to New York, working as a waitress to support herself while performing folk songs in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. She married fellow songwriter Tom Slocum in 1969 and recorded her first album, Gliding Bird. Harris and Slocum soon divorced, and Harris and her newborn daughter Hallie moved in with her parents in the Maryland suburbs on the edge of Washington, D.C.^[1]

With Gram Parsons[link]

Harris soon returned to performing as part of a trio with Gerry Mule and Tom Guidera. One night in 1971, members of the country rock group The Flying Burrito Brothers happened to be in the audience. Former Byrds member Chris Hillman, who had taken over the band after the departure of its founder Gram Parsons, was so impressed by Harris that he briefly considered asking her to join the band. Instead, Hillman ended up recommending her to Parsons, who was looking for a female vocalist to work with on his first solo album, GP. Harris toured as a member of Parsons' band, The Fallen Angels, in 1973, and the couple shone during vocal harmonies and duets. Harris was quite pleased, and invested a lot emotionally in their relationship. Later that year, Parsons and Harris worked on a studio album, Grievous Angel. Parsons died in his motel room near what is now Joshua Tree National Park on September 19, 1973, from an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol. Parsons's Grievous Angel was released posthumously in 1974, and three more tracks from his last sessions with Harris were included on another posthumous Parsons album, Sleepless Nights, in 1976. There was one more album of recorded material from that period of time that was packaged with the name, Live 1973, but was not released until 1982.

The working relationship between Harris and Parsons is of great importance in country and country-rock music history. Parsons offered Harris a study in true country music, introducing her to artists like The Louvin Brothers, and provided her with a musical identity; Harris's harmony and duet vocals, on the other hand, were lauded by those who heard them, and helped inspire Parsons' performances. His death left her devastated at an emotional and musical crossroads. She eventually carried on with her own version of Parsons' musical vision, and was instrumental in bringing attention to his achievements. Harris's earliest signature song, and arguably her most personal one, "Boulder to Birmingham", written shortly after Gram's death, showed the depth of her shock and pain at losing Parsons. It was, according to her best friend Linda Ronstadt, the beginning of a "lifetime effort to process what had happened", and was just the first of many songs written and/or performed by Harris about her life with (and without) Parsons.

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham

I would hold my life in his saving grace.

I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham

If I thought I could see, I could see your face.

  —"Boulder to Birmingham"

  lyrics by Emmylou Harris

The Hot Band[link]

Hot Band member James Burton

Warner Brothers A&R representative Mary Martin introduced Harris to Canadian producer Brian Ahern, who produced her major label debut album, Pieces of the Sky, released in 1975 on Reprise Records. The album was surprisingly eclectic, especially by Nashville standards, including cover versions of The Beatles' "For No One", Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" and The Louvin Brothers' "If I Could Only Win Your Love". It also featured "Bluebird Wine", a composition by young Texas songwriter Rodney Crowell, who was the first in a long line of songwriters whose talents Harris has championed. The record was one of the most expensive country records produced at the time, featuring the talents of James Burton, Glen Hardin, Ron Tutt, Ray Pohlman, and Bill Payne, as well as two tracks ("Before Believing" and "Queen of the Silver Dollar") that were cut with the Angel Band. Two singles were released: "Too Far Gone", which initially charted at #73 (a 1979 reissue hit #13), and Harris's first big hit, "If I Could Only Win Your Love", a duet with Herb Pedersen (later a founding member of The Desert Rose Band), which peaked at #4.

Executives of Warner Bros. Records (Reprise Records's parent company) told Harris they would agree to record her if she would "get a hot band". Harris did so, enlisting guitarist James Burton and pianist Glen Hardin, both of whom had played with Elvis Presley as well as Parsons. Burton was a renowned guitarist, starting in Ricky Nelson's band in the 1950s, and Hardin had been a member of The Crickets. 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 Crowell was enlisted as a rhythm guitarist and duet partner.^[2] Harris's first tour schedule originally dovetailed around Presley's, owing to Burton and Hardin's continuing commitments to Presley's band. The Hot Band lived up to its name, with most of the members moving on with fresh talent replacing them as they continued on to solo careers of their own.

Elite Hotel, released in December 1975, established that the buzz created by Pieces of the Sky was well-founded. Unusual for country albums at the time, which largely revolved around a hit single, Harris's albums borrowed their approach from the album-oriented rock market. In terms of quality and artistic merit, tracks like "Sin City", "Wheels", and "Till I Gain Control Again", which weren't singles, easily stood against tracks like "Together Again", "Sweet Dreams", and "One of These Days", which were. While Elite Hotel was a #1 country album, the album did sufficiently well as a crossover success with the rock audience. Harris appealed to those who normally disapproved of the country market's pull toward crossover pop singles ("Together Again" and "Sweet Dreams" both topped the country charts). Elite Hotel won a Grammy in 1976 for Best Country Vocal Performance, Female.

Harris' reputation for guest work continued. Aside from contributing to albums by Linda Ronstadt, Guy Clark and Neil Young, Harris was tapped by Bob Dylan to perform on his Desire album, but entirely uncredited. Harris also filmed one of the studio sequences, owing to her touring schedule, in The Band's The Last Waltz, singing "Evangeline".

Burton left the Hot Band in 1976, choosing to remain with Elvis Presley's band, and was replaced by English guitarist Albert Lee. Harris's commercial apex was Luxury Liner, released in 1977, which remains one of her definitive records. On Luxury Liner, Harris's mix of songs from Chuck Berry ("(You Never Can Tell) C'est La Vie"), Gram Parsons (the title track and "She"), The Carter Family ("Hello Stranger") and Kitty Wells ("Making Believe") illustrate a continuity and artistic merit to country music often overlooked at the time. Despite Top Ten singles with "C'est La Vie" and "Making Believe", the album's best known track is the first recorded cover of Townes Van Zandt's classic "Pancho & Lefty", which would be a #1 hit for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard in 1983. At the end of 1977, Crowell left the Hot Band to pursue a solo career; his replacement was bluegrass multi-instrumentalist and singer Ricky Skaggs.

Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town signaled a slight change of direction from Harris's previous three albums. Rather than mixing classic and contemporary, the album is made up largely of recently written songs, though from a wide variety of writers. "Two More Bottles of Wine", written by Delbert McClinton, became Harris's third #1 single, "To Daddy", written by Dolly Parton, went to #3, and a third single, "Easy From Now On", went Top Twenty. The album included two songs apiece from Crowell ("I Ain't Living Long Like This" and "Leaving Louisiana In The Broad Daylight") and songwriter Jesse Winchester ("Defying Gravity" and "My Songbird"), and Utah Phillips' "Green Rolling Hills".

The Roots Records[link]

In 1977 (January), Harris married Brian Ahern.^[3] Their (Harris' second) daughter, Meghann, was born in 1979. During this time, Harris cut three studio albums that reflected a shift toward traditional country (the industry, on the other hand, was about to embrace Urban Cowboy). The first key to the change in direction was her Grammy Award-winning 1979 album Blue Kentucky Girl. Apart from a cover of The Drifters' "Save The Last Dance For Me", the album was largely made up of classic-styled country material in the vein of Loretta Lynn and Kitty Wells. One of her best-loved albums, the record includes songs ranging from The Louvin Brothers' "Everytime You Leave" to Willie Nelson's "Sister's Coming Home" to Gram Parson's signature "Hickory Wind". Wesley Rose took special interest in Harris' recording of "Beneath Still Waters", which became a #1 smash.

A Christmas album, Light of the Stable, was released in 1979; its title track featured backing vocals by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young, all three of whom Harris had been working with sporadically since the mid-1970s, and would continue to collaborate with through the 2000s. (Harris, Parton and Ronstadt began working on a planned trio album during this time, though it would remain unfinished for nearly a decade; a few of the tracks recorded for the project surfaced on the women's respective solo albums in the interim.) The album is largely acoustic, featuring readings of traditional fare such as "Silent Night", "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and "The First Noel".

In the 1980s, Harris pursued country music's history even further with the bluegrass-oriented recording of Roses in the Snow, featuring Ricky Skaggs, Tony Rice, Albert Lee, Emory Gordy Jr. and Jerry Douglas. Harris's versions of the traditional "Wayfaring Stranger" and Paul Simon's "The Boxer" were strong singles.

In 1980, Harris recorded "That Lovin' You Feelin' Again" with Roy Orbison. The duet was a Top 10 hit on both the Country and Adult Contemporary charts. They would win the Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group. She would also be featured on Paul Kennerley's concept album The Legend of Jesse James, which also featured Levon Helm of The Band and Johnny Cash.

Pop-chart success, songwriting[link]

In 1981, Harris reached the Top 40 on the Billboard pop chart with a cover of "Mister Sandman"—again Top 10 Country as well as Adult Contemporary—from her Evangeline album. (The album version of the song was a track from the ill-fated Trio sessions with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt, but neither Parton's nor Ronstadt's record companies would allow their artists' vocals to be used on the single, so Harris re-recorded the song, singing all three parts.)

Harris moved to Nashville in 1982. White Shoes in 1983 included an eclectic pairing of the rockish reading of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" with a remake of the Donna Summer hit "On the Radio", as well as tracks from a diverse group of songwriters such as Hot Band member Crowell, Sandy Denny and T-Bone Burnett and was her last album produced by Brian Ahern until All I Intended to Be in 2008.

Harris's major-label releases thus far had included few self-penned songs, but in 1985 her songwriting skills were much in evidence with the release of a concept album The Ballad of Sally Rose, for which she co-wrote all of the songs. The album was semi-autobiographical in theme, based loosely on her relationship with Parsons. Harris described it as a "country opera", and a "huge commercial disaster".^[4] Her co-writer and producer on the album was English songwriter and musician Paul Kennerley, writer of the hit singles "Born to Run" (on Harris's 1981 Cimarron album) and "In My Dreams" (on White Shoes). Kennerley also produced her next album, Thirteen. They were married in 1985 and divorced in 1993.

In 1987, nearly a full decade after they'd first attempted to do so, Harris teamed up with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt for their long-promised and much-anticipated Trio disc. The album was the biggest commercial success of Harris's career, spending five weeks at #1 on Billboard's Country Albums chart (also quickly reaching the Top 10 on the Pop Albums chart), sold several million copies and produced four Top 10 Country hits, including "To Know Him Is To Love Him", which hit #1. The disc was nominated for the coveted Album Of The Year Grammy award (given to U2 that year for The Joshua Tree) and the three women won the statuette for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal; the album's Linda Thompson-penned track "Telling Me Lies" reached #3 Country, #25 Adult Contemporary, and was also nominated for a Grammy as 1987's Best Country Song.

Harris also found time in 1987 to release a solo album, Angel Band, featuring traditional gospel songs, on which she worked with, among others, rising country star Vince Gill.

In 1989, she recorded two songs with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume II. In a snippet of studio chatter included on one of the tracks, she talked during the recording session about her beginnings and how music had changed:

Years ago I had the experience of sitting around in a living room with a bunch of people and singing and playing, and it was like a spiritual experience, it was wonderful. And I decided then that was what I was going to do with my life was play music, do music. In the making of records, I think over the years we've all gotten a little too technical, a little too hung up on getting things perfect. We've lost the living room. The living room has gone out of the music, but today I feel like we got it back.

Around 1991, she dissolved The Hot Band and formed a new band of acoustic musicians—Sam Bush on fiddle, mandolin and vocals, Roy Huskey, Jr. on bass and vocals, Larry Atamanuik on drums, Al Perkins on banjo, guitar, Dobro guitar and vocals, and Jon Randall on guitar, mandolin and vocals—which she named The Nash Ramblers. They recorded a Grammy Award-winning live album in 1992 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, which led to the $8 million restoration of the facility into a premium concert and event venue. It was her last album with Reprise Records.

New directions[link]

By the 1990s, Harris started receiving less airplay as mainstream country stations began shifting their focus to the youth-oriented "new country" format. Harris's albums Bluebird and Brand New Dance (1989 and 1990, respectively) received ample critical acclaim and sold reasonably well, yet her chart success was on the wane. 1993's Cowgirl's Prayer—the first album since her switch to Elektra Records—was critically praised but received very little airplay,^[5] and its lead single, "High Powered Love" charted very low, peaking at #63, prompting her to shift her career in a new direction.

In 1995, Harris released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the decade, Wrecking Ball, produced by Daniel Lanois, best known for his work with U2, Peter Gabriel and Bob Dylan. An experimental album for Harris, the record included Harris's rendition of the Neil Young-penned title track (Young himself provided guest vocals on two of the album's songs), Steve Earle's "Goodbye", Julie Miller's "All My Tears", Jimi Hendrix's "May This Be Love", Kate and Anna McGarrigle's "Goin' Back to Harlan" and Gillian Welch's "Orphan Girl". U2's Larry Mullen, Jr. showed up to play drums for the project. The album received virtually no country airplay whatsoever, but did bring Harris to the attention of alternative rock listeners, many of whom had never listened to her music before.

Harris then took her Wrecking Ball material on the road, releasing the live Spyboy in 1998, backed with a power trio comprising Nashville producer, songwriter and guitarist Buddy Miller and New Orleans musicians, drummer Brady Blade and bassist-vocalist-percussionist Daryl Johnson. In addition to performing songs from Wrecking Ball, the album updated many of Harris's career hits, including "Boulder to Birmingham".

Also in 1998, she appeared prominently on Willie Nelson's moody, instrumentally sparse Teatro album, produced by Wrecking Ball producer Lanois.^[6]

During the summer of 1997 and 1998, Harris joined Sarah McLachlan's all-woman musical touring festival, the Lilith Fair, where new artists like Patty Griffin could share new experiences and ideas with seasoned musicians like Harris and Bonnie Raitt.

In January 1999, Harris released Trio 2 with Parton and Ronstadt. Much of the album had actually been recorded in 1994, but remained unreleased for nearly five years because of record label and personnel disputes, conflicting schedules, and career priorities of the three artists. Trio 2 was much more contemporary-sounding than its predecessor and was certified Gold. It included their version of Neil Young's classic "After The Gold Rush", which became a popular music video and won another Grammy—this one for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. Harris and Ronstadt then released a duet album, Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions, later the same year. The two superstars toured together during the fall months in support of the disc. Both albums made the Top 10 of Billboard's Country Albums chart and did well on the pop side as well.

Also in 1999, Harris paid tribute to her former singing partner Gram Parsons by co-executive producing Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons, an album that gathered together more than a dozen artists. Harris performed duets with Beck, Sheryl Crow and The Pretenders on this album's tracks.

In 2000, Harris released her solo follow-up to Wrecking Ball, Red Dirt Girl, produced by Lanois protégé Malcolm Burn. For the first time since The Ballad of Sally Rose, the album contained a number of Harris's own compositions. Like Wrecking Ball, the album's sound leaned more toward alternative rock than country. Nevertheless it reached #5 on Billboard's Country Albums chart as well as a healthy #54 on the pop side. It also won Harris another of her 12 Grammy awards, in the category of Best Contemporary Folk Album.

Harris also accompanied on alternative country singer Ryan Adams' solo debut Heartbreaker and on Tracy Chapman's fifth album Telling Stories.

Also in 2000, Harris joined an all-star group of traditional country, folk and blues artists for the T-Bone Burnett-produced soundtrack to the Coen Brothers film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? The soundtrack won multiple CMA, ACM and Grammy awards. A documentary/concert film, Down from the Mountain, featured the artists performing music from the film and other songs at the Ryman Auditorium. Harris and many of the same artists took their show on the road for the Down from the Mountain Tour in 2002. In 2003, Harris supplied the finishing touches in harmonizing with the Dixie Chicks on a song they were recording in the studio, "Godspeed".

Recent work[link]

Harris released Stumble into Grace, her follow-up to Red Dirt Girl, in 2003. Like its predecessor, it contained mostly self-penned material. In 2004, Harris led the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue tour with Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin. They performed singly and together and swapped instruments.

On September 9, 2005, Harris participated in "Shelter from the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast", a series of concerts simulcast by most American television stations to raise money for victims of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. She performed with Beth Neilsen Chapman and the Dixie Chicks, harmonizing on Patty Griffin's song, "Mary".

Harris playing in Rotterdam, Netherlands (2006)

In 2005, Harris worked with Conor Oberst on Bright Eyes' release, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, performing backup vocals on three tracks. In July, she joined Elvis Costello on several dates of his US tour, performing alongside Costello and his band on several numbers each night. Harris and Costello recorded a version of Costello's song, "The Scarlet Tide", from the soundtrack of the movie Cold Mountain. July also saw the release of The Very Best of Emmylou Harris: Heartaches & Highways, a single-disc retrospective of Harris's career, on the Rhino Entertainment label. This same year, Harris appeared as a guest vocalist on Neil Young's widely acclaimed Prairie Wind. She also appeared in the Jonathan Demme documentary-concert film Neil Young: Heart of Gold, released in 2006.

Harris performing in the Netherlands with Mark Knopfler

All the Roadrunning, an album of collaborations with former Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler, was released in April 2006 and supported by a tour of Europe and the US. The album was a commercial success, reaching #8 in the UK and #17 in the US. Selections recorded during the All the Roadrunning tour performance at the Gibson Amphitheatre were released as a CD/DVD package titled Real Live Roadrunning in November 2006. In addition to several of the compositions that Harris and Knopfler recorded together in the studio, Real Live Roadrunning features solo hits from both members of the duo, as well as a few classic tracks from Knopfler's days with Dire Straits.

Harris is featured on A Tribute To Joni Mitchell, released on April 24, 2007. Harris covered the song "The Magdalene Laundries" (originally on Mitchell's 1994 album, Turbulent Indigo). She sang "Another Pot O' Tea" with Anne Murray on Murray's album Anne Murray Duets: Friends and Legends, released November 13, 2007, in Canada and January 15, 2008, in the U.S.

Harris wrote a song called "In Rodanthe" for the 2008 film Nights In Rodanthe.

A solo album, All I Intended to Be, was released on June 10, 2008, to critical acclaim. Contributors include Buddy Miller, the McGarrigle sisters, Vince Gill, Phil Madeira, and Dolly Parton. She toured with an ensemble she dubbed the Red Dirt Boys, featuring Phil Madeira on accordion, guitar, and keyboards, Colin Linden on guitar and banjo, Rickie Simpkins on mandolin and fiddle, Chris Donohue on bass, and Bryan Owings on drums.^[7] It did not include Miller, who was touring with Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett at the time. In 2009, Harris toured with Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, and Miller as "Three Girls and Their Buddy". Madeira, Simpkins, and Donohue performed with her in late 2008, and in 2009, appearing on "A Prairie Home Companion" and at MerleFest and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. In September 2009, Owings rejoined the Red Dirt Boys with Miller for the remainder of 2009.

In April 2009 Harris became a grandmother. Her daughter gave birth to a daughter, Prudence.^[8]

In 2010, Harris regrouped with the latest version of the Red Dirt Boys—Madeira, Owings, Donohue, and Simpkins—for Lilith Fair summer dates and a scheduled US autumn tour.

According to an interview with Bonnie Tyler by Digital Spy, Emmylou Harris will be teaming up with her on Tyler's upcoming album. Harris will do backing vocals on a song, written and produced by Wayne Warner. A new solo album, Hard Bargain, was released on the Nonesuch label on April 26, 2011.

PBS host Tavis Smiley interviewed Harris in a program that aired on April 20, 2011. In the interview Harris spoke of being a straight-A student in high school, which led her to being selected as valedictorian, and recounted learning to play guitar by memorizing three chords.^{[citation needed]}

The 2012 single "Emmylou" by Swedish folk duo First Aid Kit on their album The Lion's Roar is, in part, a tribute to Harris, with its lyrics referring to her relationship to Gram Parsons.

Activism[link]

In 1997 and 1998, Harris performed in Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair, promoting feminism in music. Since 1999, Harris has been organizing an annual benefit tour called Concerts for a Landmine Free World. All proceeds from the tours support the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation's (VVAF) efforts to assist innocent victims of conflicts around the world. The tour also benefits the VVAF's work to raise America's awareness of the global landmine problem. Artists that have joined Harris on the road for these dates include Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bruce Cockburn, Sheryl Crow, Steve Earle, Joan Baez, Patty Griffin, Nanci Griffith, Willie Nelson, and Lucinda Williams. Harris is a supporter of animal rights and an active member of PETA.^[9] She founded, and in her spare time assists at, an animal shelter in Nashville.^[10]

She became a member of the newly formed Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011.^[11][12]

Awards and other honors[link]

Grammy Awards[link]

2005 Best Female Country Vocal Performance ("The Connection")

2001 Album of the Year (O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

2000 Best Contemporary Folk Album (Red Dirt Girl)

1999 Best Country Collaboration with Vocals ("After The Gold Rush", with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt)

1998 Best Country Collaboration with Vocals ("Same Old Train", with Alison Krauss, Clint Black, Dwight Yoakam, Earl Scruggs, Joe Diffie, Marty Stuart, Merle Haggard, Pam Tillis, Patty Loveless, Randy Travis, Ricky Skaggs & Travis Tritt)

1995 Best Contemporary Folk Album (Wrecking Ball)

1992 Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal (Emmylou Harris & The Nash Ramblers At the Ryman, as Emmylou Harris & The Nash Ramblers)

1987 Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal (Trio, with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt)

1984 Best Country Vocal Performance, Female ("In My Dreams")

1980 Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group ("That Lovin' You Feelin' Again", with Roy Orbison)

1979 Best Country Vocal Performance, Female (Blue Kentucky Girl)

1976 Best Country Vocal Performance, Female (Elite Hotel)^[13]

Country Music Association Awards[link]

2001 Album of the Year (O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

1980 Female Vocalist Of The Year

1988 Vocal Event of the Year (Trio, with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt)^[14]

Other honors[link]

• VH1's 100 Most Influential Women in Rock and Roll (1998) - Number 22 out of 100
• Billboard's Century Award recipient (1999)^[15] - inducted by Sarah McLachlan
• CMT's 40 Greatest Women of Country Music - #5 ranking (2002)
• Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on February 12, 2008^[16]
• Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.
• Awarded an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College of Music in 2009.^[17]

Discography[link]

Collaborations and other appearances[link]

References[link]

Sources[link]

• In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music, Nicholas Dawidoff, Vintage Books, 1998. ISBN 0-679-41567-X
• Emmylou Harris: Angel in Disguise, Jim Brown, Fox Music Books, 2004. ISBN 1-894997-03-4
• Fong-Torres, Ben. (1998). "Emmylou Harris". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 230.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Emmylou Harris

• Official Site (requires Flash player)
• Emmylou Harris Comprehensive former official site
• Emmylou Harris at Allmusic
• Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
• Emmylou Harris Questionnaire (June 2008)
• Pitchfork article
• Gibson interview
• Interview
• Emmylou Harris on Charlie Rose
• Emmylou Harris at the Internet Movie Database

Mark Knopfler
Mark Knopfler, July 2006
Background information
Birth name	Mark Freuder Knopfler
Born	(1949-08-12) 12 August 1949 (age 62) Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Origin	Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Genres	Rock Roots rock Celtic rock Country rock Blues-rock
Occupations	Musician, Songwriter, Record producer, Film score composer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, resonator guitar
Years active	1965–present
Labels	Vertigo, Mercury, Warner
Associated acts	Dire Straits The Notting Hillbillies Chet Atkins Emmylou Harris Bob Dylan Eric Clapton Sonny Landreth
Website	MarkKnopfler.com
Notable instruments
Mark Knopfler Stratocaster Fender Telecaster Gibson Les Paul Pensa Custom MKII Steinberger GL-2

Mark Freuder Knopfler, OBE (born 12 August 1949) is a Scottish-born British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer and film score composer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the British rock band Dire Straits, which he co-founded in 1977. After Dire Straits disbanded in 1995, Knopfler went on to record and produce six solo albums, including Golden Heart (1996), Sailing to Philadelphia (2000), and Get Lucky (2009). He has composed and produced film scores for eight films, including Local Hero (1983), Cal (1984), and The Princess Bride (1987).^[1] In addition to his work with Dire Straits and as a solo artist and composer, Knopfler has recorded and performed with many prominent musical artists, including Phil Lynott, Chet Atkins, The Chieftains, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Jools Holland, Sonny Landreth, and Van Morrison. He has produced albums for Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, and Randy Newman.

Knopfler is one of the most respected fingerstyle guitarists of the modern rock era, and was ranked 27th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.^[2] Knopfler and Dire Straits have sold in excess of 120 million albums to date.^[3][4] A four-time Grammy Award winner, Knopfler is the recipient of the Edison Award and the Steiger Award, and holds three honorary doctorate degrees in music from universities in the United Kingdom.^[5][6]

Early life (1949–1976)[link]

Mark Freuder Knopfler was born on 12 August 1949 in Glasgow, Scotland, to an English mother and Hungarian Jewish father—an architect whose anti-fascist sympathies forced him to flee from his native Hungary.^[7] The family settled in Knopfler's mother's home town of Blyth, Northumberland in North East England when he was 7 years old. He and his younger brother David attended Gosforth Grammar School. Inspired by his uncle Kingsley's harmonica and boogie-woogie piano playing, he wanted to buy an expensive Fiesta Red Fender Stratocaster just like Hank Marvin's, but had to settle for a £50 twin-pick-up Höfner Super Solid.^[8] During the 1960s, he formed and joined schoolboy bands and listened to singers like Elvis Presley and guitarists Chet Atkins, Scotty Moore, B.B King, Django Reinhardt, Hank Marvin, and James Burton. At 16, he made a local TV appearance as part of a harmony duo, with his classmate Sue Hercombe.^[8]

In 1968, after studying journalism for a year at Harlow Technical College,^[8][9] Knopfler was hired as a junior reporter in Leeds for the Yorkshire Evening Post.^[10] Two years later, he decided to further his studies, and went on to graduate with a degree in English at the University of Leeds.^[11] In April 1970, while living in Leeds, Knopfler recorded a demo disk of an original song he'd written, "Summer's Coming My Way". The recording included Mark Knopfler (guitar and vocals), Steve Phillips (second guitar), Dave Johnson (bass), and Paul Granger (percussion). Johnson, Granger, and vocalist Mick Dewhirst played with Mark in the band Silverheels.

Upon graduation in 1973, Knopfler moved to London and joined a High Wycombe-based band called Brewers Droop, appearing on the album The Booze Brothers. One night while spending some time with friends, the only guitar available was an old acoustic with a badly warped neck that had been strung with extra-light strings to make it playable. Even so, he found it impossible to play unless he finger-picked it. He said in a later interview, "That was where I found my 'voice' on guitar." After a brief stint with Brewers Droop, Knopfler took a job as a lecturer at Loughton College in Essex—a position he held for three years. Throughout this time, he continued performing with local pub bands, including the Café Racers.^[12] He also formed a duo with long-time associate bluesman Steve Phillips called The Duolian String Pickers.

By the mid-1970s, Knopfler devoted much of his musical energies to his group, the Café Racers. His brother David moved to London, where he shared a flat with John Illsley—a guitarist who changed over to bass guitar. In April 1977, Mark gave up his flat in Buckhurst Hill and moved in with David and John. The three began playing music together, and soon Mark invited John to join the Café Racers.^[13]

Dire Straits (1977–1995)[link]

Dire Straits' first demos were done in three sessions during 1977, with Pick Withers as drummer, David Knopfler as rhythm guitarist and John Illsley on bass guitar. On 27 July 1977 they recorded the now famous demo tapes of five songs: "Wild West End", "Sultans of Swing", "Down To The Waterline", "Sacred Loving" (a David Knopfler song) and "Water of Love". In what was probably October they recorded "Southbound Again", "In The Gallery" and "Six Blade Knife" for BBC Radio London and, finally, on 9 November demo tapes were made of "Setting Me Up", "Eastbound Train" and "Real Girl". Many of these songs reflected Mark's experiences in Newcastle, Leeds and London, and were to be featured on their first album, the self-titled Dire Straits which was released in the following year: "Down To The Waterline" recalled images of life in Newcastle; "In The Gallery" is a tribute to a Leeds sculptor/artist named Harry Phillips, (father of Steve Phillips); and "Lions", "Wild West End" and "Eastbound Train" were all drawn from Mark's early days in the capital.

Mark Knopfler with Dire Straits, 1979

Initially on its release, Dire Straits received little fanfare in the UK, but when "Sultans of Swing" was released as a single it became a chart hit in The Netherlands and album sales took off across Europe and then in the United States and Canada, and finally the UK. The group's second album, Communiqué, produced by Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett, followed in 1979, reaching number one in France while the first album was still at number three.

There were frequent personnel changes within Dire Straits after the release of their third album Making Movies, with Mark Knopfler increasingly becoming the driving force behind the group. Released in 1980, Making Movies marked a move towards more complex arrangements and production which continued for the remainder of the group's career. The album included many of Mark Knopfler's most personal compositions, most notably "Romeo and Juliet" and "Tunnel of Love". Love over Gold followed in 1982 and included the UK #2 hit "Private Investigations", "Telegraph Road", "Industrial Disease" and "It Never Rains" as well as the title track to that album.

With Love Over Gold still in the albums charts, the band released a four-song EP titled ExtendedancEPlay in early 1983. Featuring the hit single "Twisting By the Pool", this was the first output by the band that featured new drummer Terry Williams, (formerly of Rockpile), who had replaced Pick Withers in November 1982. A world tour followed later in 1983, and in March 1984 the double album Alchemy Live was released. Alchemy Live documented the recordings of two live shows in Hammersmith Odeon in London in July 1983, and reached number three in the UK Albums Chart.

During 1983 and 1984 Knopfler was involved with other projects as well, including writing and producing the music score to the film Local Hero which was a large success,^[14] and it was followed in 1984 by his scores for the films Cal and Comfort and Joy. Also during this time Knopfler produced Bob Dylan's Infidels album, as well as Aztec Camera and Willy DeVille; he also wrote Private Dancer for Tina Turner's comeback album of the same name.

Mark Knopfler with Dire Straits, Dublin, 1981

Dire Straits' biggest studio album by far was their fifth, Brothers in Arms, recorded at Air Studios Montserrat and released in May 1985. It became an international blockbuster which has now sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and is the fourth best selling album in UK chart history.^[15][16] Brothers In Arms spawned several chart singles including the US # 1 hit "Money for Nothing", which was the first video ever to be played on MTV in Britain. It was also the first compact disc to sell a million copies and is largely credited for launching the CD format as it was also one of the first DDD^[17] CDs ever released. Other successful singles were "So Far Away", "Walk of Life", and the album's title track. The band's 1985–86 world tour of over 230^[8] shows was immensely successful.

After the Brothers in Arms tour Dire Straits ceased to work together for some time, Knopfler concentrating mainly on film soundtracks. Knopfler joined the charity ensemble Ferry Aid on "Let It Be" in the wake of the Zeebrugge ferry disaster. The song reached #1 on the UK singles chart in March 1987. Knopfler wrote the music score for the film The Princess Bride which was released at the end of 1987.

Mark Knopfler also took part in a comedy skit (featured on the French and Saunders Show) titled "The Easy Guitar Book Sketch" with comedian Rowland Rivron and fellow British musicians David Gilmour, Lemmy from Motorhead, Mark King from Level 42, and Gary Moore. Phil Taylor explained in an interview that Knopfler used Gilmour's guitar rig and managed to sound like himself when performing in the skit.^[18]

Dire Straits regrouped for the 11 June 1988 Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert at Wembley Stadium, in which they were the headline act, and were accompanied by Elton John and Eric Clapton,^[19] who by this time had developed a strong friendship with Knopfler. Shortly after this, drummer Terry Williams left the band. In September 1988 Mark Knopfler announced the official dissolution of Dire Straits, saying that he "needed a rest",^[20] and in October 1988, a "best of" album, Money for Nothing, was released and reached number one in the United Kingdom.^[21]