Slam_Bradley and I were discussing Gram Parsons a couple of days ago and it put me in mind of some liner notes that I wrote for a retrospective compilation CD of Gram's music a few years back. The CD was of dubious legality and was ultimately never released, but my liner notes hopefully put across exactly why Gram Parsons was such a special and important musician...



Gram Parsons - Cosmic American Music 1965-1973


Gram Parsons was a talented musician, a fine songwriter and the owner of a cracked, wounded voice that could tug at a listener's heart strings in that other-worldly manner that country and bluegrass veterans refer to as "high lonesome". But above all, Gram Parsons was a visionary and a pioneer. At a time when his contemporaries were playing jangly folk-rock or wearing flowers in their hair and grooving to the far out sounds of psychedelia, Parsons was on a personal mission to fuse traditional country & western music with contemporary rock. In doing so, he hoped to make country music fashionable for his own generation. Let's not forget that in the mid-1960s, country & western was widely considered by rock culture to be fuddy-duddy music, played by old men from Nashville. The fact that Parsons wore his hair fashionably long and was only in his early 20s when he recorded the seminal country-rock albums Safe at Home and Sweetheart of the Rodeo (with the International Submarine Band and The Byrds respectively) was in itself revolutionary in the context of Sixties music.

Despite a few early musical missteps, like the over-earnest folk stylings of The Shilohs or the 12-bar garage rock of the International Submarine Band's "One Day Week", by the time Parsons recorded self-penned classics like "Luxury Liner", "Do You Know How It Feels to Be Lonesome?", "Hickory Wind" and "One Hundred Years from Now", he had already perfected a sound that he would later describe as "Cosmic American Music". In essence, this was a hybrid of contemporary rock and honky tonk country, but it also encompassed various other roots music forms, such as folk, soul, rhythm & blues and '50s rock 'n' roll.

Following the release of the International Submarine Band's Safe at Home album (a record now widely regarded as the first bona fide country-rock album), Gram was recruited by the Byrds as a replacement for recently departed band members. His brief tenure with the group resulted in the highly influential, but commercially unsuccessful, Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, a record that was simply too country for the Byrds' pop audience and too rock for the country marketplace. In fact, Sweetheart elicited a great deal of resistance and hostility from the conservative Nashville establishment, due to the Byrds' counter-culture credentials. As a result, Parsons and fellow Byrd Roger McGuinn would pen a pointed response to the rednecks of Music City entitled "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man".

After leaving the Byrds, Parsons formed The Flying Burrito Brothers with ex-Byrd Chris Hillman among others, and it was on the band's debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin, that he finally crystallised his vision of Cosmic American Music. Check out the band's take on "Dark End of the Street" for an example of how Parsons successfully incorporated soul music influences into country. The Gilded Palace of Sin featured a number of Parsons' classics, including "Christine's Tune", "Hot Burrito #1" and "Sin City", with the latter offering an apocalyptic vision of late '60s Los Angeles, in which the city's record industry is given a severe ticking off.

Although the Burrito Brothers' debut album showed much promise, record sales were dismal and when the band's 1970 follow-up release, Burrito Deluxe, also flopped, Parsons lost interest and soon left the group. He took to hanging out with The Rolling Stones and his influence on that group – and on Keith Richards in particular – can be clearly heard in the country-rock flavour of Stones' songs like "Honky Tonk Women", "Dead Flowers", "Sweet Virginia", and "Wild Horses".

In mid-1972, Parsons set about recording his debut solo album with singer and guitarist Emmylou Harris. Titled simply GP, the album was highlighted by the heavenly blend of Emmylou's pure Appalachian vocal and Gram's cracked timbre. The two voices compliment each other so perfectly that Parsons and Harris can easily be ranked among the greatest male/female vocal pairings of all time. Unfortunately, the GP album underperformed commercially, although today it is often cited by critics as the pinnacle of Parsons' musical achievements. Certainly songs like "Still Feeling Blue", "A Song for You" and "The New Soft Shoe" are among the best and most finely crafted of his career.

A tour of the U.S. followed in 1973, with Gram dubbing his backing band The Fallen Angels and his tour bus The Grievous Angel. Gram and the Fallen Angels are showcased here in a rousing live rendition of American trucker anthem "Six Days on the Road" and a poignant reading of the Byrds' "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man", both taken from a March 1973 concert in Hempstead, New York. Parsons would later commemorate this North American tour in the posthumously released song "Return of the Grievous Angel".

Gram Parsons died on September 19th, 1973 in a hotel room in the Joshua Tree National Park from an overdose of morphine and alcohol. In a life full of personal tragedies, perhaps one of the biggest is that Parsons laboured in almost total obscurity during his all-too-brief career, despite the obvious high quality of his music. It was only in later years that the impact of his contribution became obvious and it's hard not to conclude that he was much too far ahead of the curve for his own good in the late '60s and early '70s.

Despite his lack of commercial success, Parsons' work with the International Submarine Band, the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers and as a solo artist would directly influence highly successful bands like the Eagles, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and the entire 1970s Los Angeles country-rock movement. Likewise, Parsons was also a big influence on "outlaw country" stars like Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Dwight Yoakam. In the mid-1980s, his music helped shape both the paisley underground and cow punk genres and in more recent years, he has almost single-handedly inspired the so-called alt country scene of the late 1990s and early 21st century.

This compilation offers a strictly chronological survey of singles, stand out album tracks and "hits that should've been", tracing Parsons' musical journey from the "collegiate folk" of the Shilohs through to his final solo recordings. If you like what you hear, I recommend tracking down all of the albums Gram was involved in because they are all well worth your time. Since discovering this music, it has been both a constant inspiration and a source of great comfort for me. Make no mistake; this music is some of the best of its era. This music is the good shit. This music is Gram Parsons.

-- Paul O'Kynd, 2014.

50 Years Ago Today-Week 2 April 1967

Ol' Blue Eyes and his daughter with the walking boots remains on top with Somethin' Stupid.Meanwhile, lurking below and selling a million copies is The Spencer Davis Group. Even with this being their 2nd back-to-back gold single 45, keyboard and vocalist Steve Winwood would shortly leave the group to form Traffic.  I certainly enjoyed this song when released, but 2 years later I thought Chicago's version from their first album was the superior one




The Hollies were extremely popular in Britain and in 1966 finally caught on in the States with both Bus Stop and Stop Stop Stop reaching the Top Ten. They continued the run in 1967 with On A Carousel which peaked at #11.




Brenda And The Tabulations (somehow I love that name) had their biggest hit in April 1967 with Dry Your Eyes, a retro doo-wop tune that peaked at #20




The Monkees and their song The Girl I Knew Somewhere was the B-Side of A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You and got it's own airplay, breaking in to the Top 40. It was the first hit that featured them actually playing their own instruments. Written by Mike Nesmith and featuring Julie Newmar on the TV show. Meow!!



Stevie Wonder has had hit singles since 1963 and this was his first for 1967. Not written by him, not one of his better songs IMHO, and would peak at #32 in April 1967. He'll do better before the year was finished

A friend showed me this video last night and I was absolutely blown away by it. I've long been a fan of the Allman Brothers Band and this is proper, vintage ABB greatness. If you've got a spare half an hour, the ensemble musicianship on display in this clip, which is taken from a 1970 gig at the Fillmore East, is f***ing wonderful...particularly Duane Allman and Dickey Betts' twin lead guitar work.

Yeah, the original Live At The Fillmore is a great album. I've never heard the expanded release, but, as you say, some of the other tracks from those concerts ended up on 1972's Eat a Peach.

Incidentally, my favourite ever live album is Fleetwood Mac's Live in Boston, which was recorded at The Boston Tea Party in 1970 -- the original 7 track version that saw release on Shanghai Records in the mid-80s. Like the Allman's set, there is now a triple album, complete Boston recordings set available, but the original 7 track album features the best material from those dates and showcases the band on absolutely top form.

I love the Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac. He was such a great singer and songwriter, and he and Danny Kirwen's duel lead guitar playing was wonderful. However, I'm really not a fan of the Buckingham-Nicks era Fleetwood Mac that produced such albums as Rumours, Tusk, Tango in the Night etc. That's really an entirely different band though, of course. I do, bizarrely, really enjoy Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks's pre-Fleetwood Mac Buckingham-Nicks album from 1973.

My all-time favorite Fleetwood Mac album came between the Peter Green and Buckingham/Nicks era. The Future Games album is a perfect late night album of dreamy tunes with a touch of jazz. It was Christine McVie's debut as part of the group as well as Bob Welch








The complete album is here