Ten Favorite Morning Songs: We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning (#3)

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It's nearing the end of the countdown of my favorite "morning" songs -- songs with the word morning in the title. As I mentioned yesterday, the rest of these are country songs, and they're doozies. Here's the next one. #3: We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning - Carl & Pearl Butler Most people who know this song know it from the Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris duet on Parsons' debut album GP. I have to tell you the truth: though I love Emmy (I've met her, too...sweet lady), her "harmonies" on the Parsons recording grate on me like Geddy Lee singing harmony with a cat choking on a hairball. I swear, she sounds like she's singing in the key of D while everyone else is in B-flat. Or maybe it's because I still have my original Columbia Records 45 of the original recording by country's husband-and-wife team Carl and Pearl Butler. The duet never went beyond "star" status, although older country music fans (like me) remember them fondly. Their biggest hit was the 1962 smash "Don't Let Me Cross Over," but they had several other great songs. Chief among them: this one, about two people having an affair despite the fact that they don't really want to ("I didn't mean to start this fire and neither did you"). Although this song didn't do very well in the charts (peaking at #62), it is a classic, primarily thanks to that Gram & Emmylou version. We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning Written by Joyce Allsup Recorded by Carl and Pearl Butler Released as a single, 1969 We've got to stop this wild desire: