Thirteen (Emmylou Harris album)


Thirteen is a 1986 Emmylou Harris album. The title came from its status as her thirteenth studio album.
Seven of the album's ten cuts are cover songs. The three "original" songs were all co-writes with Paul Kennerley, "Sweetheart of the Pines", "When I Was Yours", and "I Had My Heart Set on You". The seven covers are as follows.
1) "Mystery Train" a 1953 song by Junior Parker that was made famous by Elvis Presley's 1955 enduring version.
2) "You're Free to Go" was a little known 1955 song originally recorded by Merv Shiner and made more well known by versions done by Carl Smith, Jim Reeves, and Sonny James.
3) "Just Someone I Used to Know" is a cover of a 1969 #1 country duet by Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton, which itself was a cover adaptation of George Jones's 1962 #3 hit song, "A Girl I Used to Know".
4) "My Father's House" is a Bruce Springsteen cover from his 1982 album, Nebraska. Springsteen's song is a gut-wrencher about a son's waiting too long to reconcile with his father.
5) "Lacassine Special" is a cover of Iry LeJeune's 1950 cajun classic.
6) "Today I Started Loving You Again is a cover of Merle Haggard's 1968 epic standard, which unfathomably had only been a non-charting B-side to his #1 hit song "The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde".
7) "Your Long Journey" is a cover of a sentimental song bluegrass/gospel song written by Rosa Lee Watson with music by her husband, Doc Watson, and recorded by Doc Watson and His Family in 1963.
For unexplained reasons, the album was taken out of print a few years after its initial release, making it one of the most sought-after albums in Harris' catalogue by fans, with used copies commanding unusually high prices on eBay and other used records sites. The album was produced by Harris' then-husband, Paul Kennerley. Though the album, to date, has never been separately issued on CD, in April 2011 it was made available for download in iTunes Store. It became available as a CD in 2013 in a compilation issued by the Rhino Entertainment Company called Emmylou Harris Original Album Series Vol.2.

Track listing

Personnel