Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town

 (26 customer reviews)

This album has much to recommend it and has a similar country rock styling to Emmylou's previous album, Luxury liner. It features three of her own country hits and two other songs that were major country hits for others soon afterwards.Two more bottles of wine was originally written and recorded by Delbert McClinton, but the song remained obscure for a couple of years. Emmylou made the song her own and topped the country charts with it. In the nineties, Martina McBride covered it and included it on her Wild angels album.To Daddy was written and recorded by Dolly Parton but plans to release it were dropped when Dolly heard Emmylou's rendition of the song. Dolly's original version is brilliant - it eventually appeared on the compilation Essential volume 1 I will always love you - but despite her exuberance, Dolly is very modest about her own talents and it is entirely in character that she withheld her own version to allow Emmylou to have the first publicly available version of...Read more

While the sound on all of the remastered CDs is superb, the producers really outdid themselves on "Burn That Candle," included here. Of the four most recent reissues, this one has the best bonus tracks; they're fun and have great sound, too. All the reissues are recommended, but if you buy just one of them, choose either this one or "Blue Kentucky Girl," which has Emmylou's absolute best song ever, "Sorrow In The Wind," as well as some terrific harmonies on other tracks.

Not a perfect CD as there some weak spots here, such as "Two More Bottles Of Wine". Not a bad song, but, with this material, it needs to be played loose and rollicking. Instead it comes off as a consummate studio recording. "Burn That Candle" also sounds a bit by the numbers.

But the best material here is excellent. My personal favorite is "Green Rolling Hills", a song that's very effective in evoking the bucolic landscape of West Virginia. Another highlight is "One Paper Kid" in which Willie Nelson helps to add real emotional depth to the song. "My Songbird" and "To Daddy" are gorgeous ballads, even if the material is wistful.

Overall, there's nothing bad on this CD and there are enough highlights to make it a keeper. Also, the two bonus tracks on this reissue really are a bonus (for a change); both are live recordings made shortly after the original CD was released. "New Cut Road", an old Guy Clark song, benefits particularly well from the live setting.