Part 4
On Trio II, the standout is obviously 'After the Gold Rush.' But don't sleep on 'Feels Like Home' or 'Do I Ever Cross Your Mind.' Those are the deep cuts that reward repeat listening.
Now, about that glass harmonica. If you're like me, you heard the host mention it and thought, 'Wait, what?' Benjamin Franklin invented it in 1761. It's a series of glass bowls spinning on a rod, and you play it by touching the rims with wet fingers. It makes a sound like a ghost singing. Mozart and Beethoven both wrote music for it. It's rare to see one live, and even rarer to see it on a late-night TV show. The fact that this performance included it — even just as a curiosity — tells you this wasn't a typical promotional stop. This was an event.
You can find glass harmonica performances on YouTube. There's a woman named Vera Meyer who plays it beautifully. There's also a channel called Glass Harmonica that has some great demonstrations. It's worth five minutes of your time just to hear what all the fuss was about.
As for where to find this specific performance? It's a classic late-night TV moment. The transcript doesn't specify whether it was The Tonight Show with Jay Leno or Late Show with David Letterman, but both are possible. Your best bet is YouTube. Search 'Emmylou Harris Linda Ronstadt Dolly Parton After the Gold Rush live' and you'll find it. It's been uploaded and re-uploaded dozens of times. The quality varies, but the magic doesn't.
If you want more, check out their other collaborations. They recorded 'To Know Him Is to Love Him' and 'Those Memories of You' for Trio, and those performances are also floating around online. There's a great clip of them singing 'Wildflowers' on The Johnny Cash Show — wait, no, that's not right. Let me not invent things. Just search for their live performances from the late '80s and early '90s. You'll find them.
Now, here's the part that makes this performance even more precious. All three of these women have faced serious health challenges in recent years. Linda Ronstadt was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2012 and retired from singing in 2013. She can no longer perform. Dolly has had her own share of ailments — back problems, kidney stones, and more recently, she's been open about her health struggles. Emmylou is still going strong, but she's in her seventies now. The days of seeing all three of them on stage together are gone. That's not sad — that's just time. But it means this clip isn't just entertainment. It's a document. It's a moment frozen in amber.
So what do you do with all this? You watch the clip again. You listen to Trio and Trio II. You fall down a rabbit hole of Emmylou Harris's solo work — start with Wrecking Ball from 1995, produced by Daniel Lanois. You listen to Linda Ronstadt's Heart Like a Wheel from 1974 and understand why she was the most versatile singer of her generation. You put on Dolly's Jolene and remember that she wrote that song and 'I Will Always Love You' on the same day. You appreciate the fact that these three women didn't just make music together. They made history.
And then you come back to this performance. You watch the way Dolly closes her eyes on the second verse. You watch Linda's hands grip the microphone stand. You watch Emmylou sway just slightly, like she's feeling every word in her bones. You realize that what you're seeing isn't just three great singers. It's three friends who have been through decades of ups and downs, who have watched each other get married and divorced, have children, lose parents, battle illness, and somehow still find a way to stand together and sing about spaceships and the 20th century and the dream that saw the knights in armor come.
That's the legacy of Trio. Not the sales figures. Not the awards. The fact that three women who could have been rivals chose to be collaborators. The fact that they waited nine years to make the first album and twelve more to make the second. The fact that they didn't rush it. They let it be right.
And now it's your turn. You've seen the performance. You've read the backstory. You know what to listen to next. So do yourself a favor: pour a glass of wine, turn off the lights, and let these three voices remind you why music can still break your heart in the best way.
