Infamous Angel

Steve Fishell was first lined up to produce, but Jim Rooney took it on. Before tracking, DeMent met Rooney, guitarist Mark Howard and bassist Roy Huskey Jr. at Jack's Tracks so she could get used to playing with a band, something she had done little of. Rooney said the sessions were all live and happened very quickly, and only harmony vocals were overdubbed. Rich Adler engineered, her vocal went down on a rebuilt Neumann U87 to a Studer 24-track, and the record was mixed at Jack's Tracks. She nearly left off Let the Mystery Be, until Rooney insisted it stay.

Emmylou Harris sings and plays guitar on Mama's Opry, and Flora Mae DeMent leads the closing Higher Ground. John Prine's liner notes call her voice one you have heard before, but not really. Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times heard Prine's feel for people and places in her writing, AllMusic gave it five stars, and in 2021 Pitchfork's Jayson Greene gave it 9.0 in a Sunday Review. After selling about 80,000 copies on Philo it was reissued by Warner Bros. in 1993, and later by Yep Roc, which issued a 30th-anniversary remaster in 2022.