Emmylou Harris had a hit in 1980 with "The Boxer," from her Roses in the Snow album. Written by Paul Simon, the song was first a hit for Simon & Garfunkel in 1969. Harris later reimagined it, more than a decade later.
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To this day, it remains one of Harris's most beloved recordings, at least among her fans. So it's surprising that Harris once revealed that she almost passed on recording the song at all, due to the lyric. The song, written from a male perspective, begins with the line, "I am just a poor boy."
"Well, I've been doing that song since I first heard it over ten years ago," Harris says in a 1980 interview with High Fidelity. "I felt very strongly about it, having lived in New York City. But there was something about changing the gender that I couldn't bring myself to do. The song only worked from a man's point of view, so I resisted recording it."
Fortunately, Harris figured out a way for it to make sense, at least in her mind, for her to record "The Boxer." She found it by looking at some of country music's earliest influencers.
"Then it came to me to deal with it like an old traditional — singing a story song in the Carter Family tradition," Harris explains. "By doing that, it doesn't matter if I'm singing 'I am just a poor boy,' especially if it's done in three-part harmony with an autoharp. It's a way to take a modern classic and adapt it to an old form."
Emmylou Harris Embraces Country Music
Harris will go down in history as one of the legends of country music. And perhaps no one is more surprised by that than Harris, who admits she once looked down on the entire genre.
"I used to look down on country. Though at the time, [it was] because I was heavily into folk protest stuff," Harris reveals. "But I couldn't help being drawn to some of it - like Hank Williams. Country was always creeping in. Like, I was an Ian and Sylvia addict. They had a lot to do with my musical inspiration. Their music was so original, it had a lot of guts and a lot of powerful beauty."
"There were all kinds of little seeds starting from the beginning," she adds. "But it was only when I met Gram [Parsons] and started working with him that I really got involved with country. That was the turning point in my musical life."
