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Gram Parsons

cubdog

cubdog

banging through drywall
Listening to some GP this morning. Whenever I do I'm immediately struck by the quality of his voice. On songs like Hot Burrito #1, She, Do Right Woman, and Hickory Wind Parsons vocals are filled with such raw emotion. It's hard to believe he died at 26. RIP

cubdog
 
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I saw this post and have heard of him but never really listened to his music before until now and I like some of it. He does have a nice voice and the music kinda grows on ya.

I also read about the circumstances of his death and how his friends loaded up a hearse with booze stole his body at the LAX and took it to Joshua Tree to burn him. Crazy ****!
 
That was Phil Kaufman who took Gram to Joshua Tree and tried to burn. Phil is a crazy dude. Fun to be around but crazy from the road.
 
Huge Gram fan here. Spent four days camping at Joshua Tree. Went to the location where they burnt his coffin and to the Joshua Tree inn where he died. Very cool places. Have you heard his first group The International Submarine Band?
 
bryterlayter said:
Huge Gram fan here. Spent four days camping at Joshua Tree. Went to the location where they burnt his coffin and to the Joshua Tree inn where he died. Very cool places. Have you heard his first group The International Submarine Band?
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I haven't but will check that out!
 
Another big fan from way back :yes:
His two albums Gram Parsons, self-titled and Grievous Angel contain some of his best although International Submarine is interesting. Of course Emmylou Harris contributed significantly to some of the vocals on those two albums.

Roger
 
hogdaddy said:
I saw this post and have heard of him but never really listened to his music before until now and I like some of it. He does have a nice voice and the music kinda grows on ya.

I also read about the circumstances of his death and how his friends loaded up a hearse with booze stole his body at the LAX and took it to Joshua Tree to burn him. Crazy ****!
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Crazey **** indeed! Too much alcohol and drugs ....a lot of crazy stuff happened back in that era.

GP had a great voice and for a young guy a very polished mature style which I think comes from the respect he had for the music. There is a live version of Hickory Wind that is note perfect and blows me away (can't remember what the album it is on).
 
Listen to Apothecary Love on the Low Anthem's second album and you will hear the ghost of Gram Parsons....
 
I was working at a new/used CD store my junior year of high school and happened upon a used copy of the Gram tribute album "Return of the Grievous Angel". I thought (a the time) that a duet between Beck and Emmylou Harris was too weird to pass up. I immediately picked up now out-of-print The Flying Burrito Brothers compilation "Farther Along: The Best Of" with most of "Gilded Palace Of Sin" on it.

Gaining an appreciation for Gram's fantastic body of work set me off in new musical directions. Researching the original artists and songwriters Gram covered got me more interested in pre-70's country music. This was about the time "O Brother, Where Art Thou" came out and there was an explosion of interest in both old and new bluegrass, mountain gospel, old-timey string music, and country blues. It all seemed to fit together, as did the work of a lot of modern performers variously lumped as alt.country. Likewise, an newly-kindled interest in The Byrds combined with steady childhood diet of Neil Young and Warren Zevon got me hooked on the 60's-70's West Coast singer/songwriter/psychedelic strands of rock and roll. Pretty soon, I could draw a direct line between Beck and Emmylou Harris. I wound up getting pretty far into music in a way that I hadn't been before and spent the next ten years working in record stores. That (and a burgeoning love of mid-century everything) lead to an interest in vintage stereo, which lead me to AK.

I'm bringing in a lot of threads here, but my point is that a lot of who I am, what I enjoy, and even some good friendships I have feel like they can be organically traced back to stumbling onto Gram Parsons. Would I recommend his music? Wholeheartedly...

I don't think we'd have gotten along in person, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for him.
 
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He was a trust fund kid which certainly made it easier for him to get in trouble. But the voice he had.You can't buy that. He had a huge effect on Keith Richards. I'd like to know how much he was involved with Exile on main street. Ive never heard it talked about other than people just saying he was there...
 
It's important to note that Gram came out of basically nowhere (fronting The International Submarine Band, whose influence well exceed their original sales figures) to hijack one of the biggest rock bands in the world and put out one of the pioneering records of country-rock, "Sweeheart of the Rodeo".

It's funny that while "Sweetheart" was being recorded, Gene Clark (arguably the most country member of The Byrds) took a break from the band to record the under-appreciated gem "The Fantastic Expedition Of Dillard & Clark". I'd argue that it's as fine of a country-rock record as the genre's ever produced. The melding of country and west-coast rock and roll was like the invention of the airplane; the Wright brothers may have been first, but the world was ready for the idea and several other independent parties would have gotten the kinks worked out soon after if they had not. Gene Clark is the Alberto Santos-Dumont to Gram's Orville Wright.
 
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