Gram Parsons

Georgia-bred singer/songwriter Gram Parsons brought traditional country music to the rock & roll audience. With his wracked, emotive vocals and his compelling C&W songcraft, Gram Parsons was a major influence on a variety of artists ranging from Emmylou Harris to Keith Richards to Elvis Costello. Though Parons hated the term "country rock" and the kind of music the term came to define, Parsons undoubtedly pioneered the genre, via his groups the International Submarine Band and the Flying Burrito Brothers, one album with the Byrds, and his solo recordings. Though none of the bands Gram Parsons started or the albums he made was ever commercially successful, he has achieved near-mythic status since his 1973 death at age 26. In the ’90s Parsons’ work continues to be embraced by a new generation of artists, many of them alt-country artists and alt-rockers.

Ingram Cecil Connor spent much of his childhood in Waycross, Georgia. The son of a Florida citrus heiress and a Tennessee-born World War II vet named Coon Dog Connor, he grew up in the lap of luxury. At age nine, he learned to play the piano, but his main musical inspiration was seeing Elvis Presley perform that year at his local auditorium. By age 12, he’d begun playing guitar. At that point, however, his life was shattered by the suicide of his father.

The family moved to his maternal grandparents’ mansion in Winter Haven, Florida; the next year, his mother married Robert Parsons, who adopted Gram and legally changed his surname to Parsons. At age 14, Parsons began playing in a succession of local rock & roll bands as well as in folk groups. In 1964 his group the Shilohs made some recordings and performed throughout the Southeast. The next year, on the day Parsons graduated from high school, his mother died of alcohol poisoning. Parsons left Florida that fall for Harvard, where he spent more time playing music than studying. After one semester, he dropped out and moved from Cambridge to the Bronx with his new group, the International Submarine Band. In 1966, with a repertoire of traditional country and R&B-tinged songs, the band played a few shows in New York, then relocated to L.A. after recording an unsuccessful single for Columbia. There, the band got a cameo role in Roger Corman’s The Trip, but by the time Parsons recorded the ISB album Safe at Home (for Lee Hazlewood’s LHI label), the band had broken up, and Parsons made the album primarily with session players. Soon after its release, Parsons met Chris Hillman and through him joined the Byrds [see entry]. The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo included two Parsons songs, “Hickory Wind” (cowritten with Bob Bu-chanan) and “One Hundred Years From Now.” (Parsons’ lead vocals on several songs were not released until 1990, on the Byrds box set.)

After just three months in the Byrds, Parsons quit in summer 1968, refusing to join the band’s tour of South Africa, reportedly because of his opposition to apartheid. In late 1968 he and Hillman (who also left the Byrds) formed the Flying Burrito Brothers [see entry]. Parsons played a strong role on the Burritos’ first LP, but left the band in April 1970, just before Burritos Deluxe came out.

In 1970 Parsons, after recovering from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident, recorded some tracks with producer Terry Melcher that were never released. He spent the next two years indulging in the rock & roll lifestyle, including a stint at his friend Keith Richards’ French villa during the recording of the Stones’ Exile on Main Street. Parsons did not record again until his 1973 solo debut GP, which featured Emmylou Harris [see entry] (who’d been discovered by Hillman) and backing by Rick Grech (ex - Blind Faith and Family); a friend from his Cambridge days, Barry Tashian (of Barry and the Remains fame); and three members of Elvis Presley’s touring band, Glen D. Hardin, James Burton, and Ronnie Tutt.

Following a brief tour with his band, the Fallen Angels, Parsons returned to the studio to record Grievous Angel. It had just been completed when, in September 1973, Parsons overdosed on a combination of morphine and tequila while relaxing at a favorite desert retreat near the Joshua Tree National Monument. He was pronounced dead after being rushed to the Yucca Valley Hospital. A few days later, his coffin, en route to New Orleans for burial, was stolen by his friend and road manager Phil Kaufman and taken back to Joshua Tree and set afire. It was later revealed that Parsons had expressed a wish for his ashes to be scattered at Joshua Tree in the event of his death.

Parsons’ legacy lived on as Emmylou Harris toured with his old band and covered and popularized his material, as did many others, including Costello on his country LP, Almost Blue. Costello also wrote liner notes for a 1982 British compilation of Parsons’ work. Bernie Leadon’s song “My Man,” from the Eagles’ 1974 On the Border, was a tribute to Parsons, and a song Richie Furay wrote about him in 1969, “Crazy Eyes,” was the title track of a 1973 Poco LP.

In 1979 Sierra/Briar Records released an album of early Parsons material with the Shilohs; a live recording of a Fallen Angels gig was released by the label four years later. In 2000 Sundazed issued Parsons’ 1965–66 solo acoustic demos, which included an early version of “Brass Buttons,” a song that had been recorded by Parsons’ Florida buddy Jim Carlton. The Gram Parsons Notebook, also released in 2000, featured bluegrass - style songs composed of music set to Parsons’ lyrics found in one of his journals by former ISB member John Nuese.

Tribute albums have also kept Parsons’ songs alive. In 1993 Rhino issued Conmemorativo: A Tribute to Gram Parsons, with his songs covered by the Mekons, Uncle Tupelo, Bob Mould, Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Peter Holsapple, Susan Cowsill, Steve Wynn, and others. Emmylou Harris was the executive producer of the 1999 tribute album Return of the Grievous Angel (Almo Sounds) featuring, among others, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, and Harris duets with Chrissie Hynde, Beck, and Sheryl Crow. A performance by many of the album’s contributors was televised on the PBS program Sessions at West 54th Street in 1999.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)