Lost Classics: Gram Parsons & The Fallen Angels - Live 1973
by Kelcy Salisbury
Retro is cool these days. Punks are wearing "Cash" tee shirts, as a shout out to the man who's frequently considered the ultimate symbol of rock-n-roll cool. Hipsters are wearing them for irony. The comic books of my childhood are blockbuster movies. They even re-made Dukes of Hazzard (shudder).
In the rush to embrace "retro-cool" the true pioneers, the ones who influenced the folks who get the credit, very rarely are recognized. I don't see anybody (punks, hipsters or otherwise) wearing "Rodgers" or "Cooke" tee shirts. I'm pretty sure if I started a business making these shirts, I'd be even broker than I am in record time. Personally, I've always embraced retro, always been interested in digging deeper and finding the roots of the music I loved. When I heard Mama Tried on vinyl as a kid, it led me to Buck Owens. When I heard Waylon Jennings sing that Bob Wills was still the king, I dug into Wills, Ernest Tubb, and so on. I'm ashamed to say I didn't discover one of the most interesting, influential and tragic figures in American music until about 1998 or so. Dwight Yoakam had released Under The Covers, an album of songs that had influenced him, and I heard an incredible duet titled Sin City. I had to know who originally recorded it, which of course led me straight to The Flying Burrito Brothers and their seminal album, The Gilded Palace of Sin. The album might have been around 30 years old at the time but the music jumped out of the speakers and grabbed ahold of me. I had to find out more about the band and the man behind the songs, Gram Parsons, who up to that point I knew of only as the writer of the Rolling Stones hit Dead Flowers and a tragically (if not surprising) deceased friend of Keith Richards.
What I found was fascinating. Here was a true country music "outlaw", the father of a movement that gave America The Eagles, a breathtakingly talented songwriter, a man whose (albeit brief) commercial success of the early 1970s helped pave the way for the outlaw movement that was soon to follow, and a tragically flawed human being who left behind one of the all time great stories of a young rock-n-roller's death. A man who did all this, didn't even live to 30, and was largely responsible for Emmylou Harris' career.
Of course even a casual Parsons fan is familiar with his work with The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers and his two solo albums, GP & Grievous Angel. Eventually I discovered a recording of an in-studio concert, recorded as part of a 1974 radio tour on Hempstead, Long Island, NY.
The recording is a slice of Americana of the time, as banter between Parsons, Emmylou Harris and the disc jockey is all captured on the recording, right down to Parsons' tongue in cheek takes at live reads of a bread commercial, a brief discussion of the band's new tour bus, a stop in Blytheville,AR is mentioned, and Parsons personality and sense of humor shine through as he seems quite lucid and healthy in spite of his prodigous drug and alcohol abuse at the time. Looking back it's a bittersweet thing to hear a man who would soon be dead, his ashes scattered in the California desert (look up the story, it's well worth the read), sounding so alive, and happy to be so.
The songs are superb. Emmylou Harris never sounded better in her illustrious career than when she was backing Parsons as a member of the Fallen Angels. Parsons himself sounds like the living embodiment of a fallen angel as the songs run the gamut from the regretful "We'll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning", the straight ahead gospel of "Country Baptizing", an extremely strong cover of Merle Haggard's "California Cotton Fields", Tompball Glaser's "Streets Of Baltimore", and on a version of "Love Hurts" that puts all others to shame. These songs are primarily covers, but the versions of "Six Days On The Road" & "Cry One More Time" stand up favorably with the originals. Parsons puts his own stamp on the album by playing "Big Mouth Blues" (a song Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones has long covered in concert), "The New Soft Shoe" and my personal favorite, the slightly subversive, definitely wierd, "Drug Store Truck Driving Man".
In summary this is not an album to cherry pick songs from, or to skip songs while listening to. It's meant to be heard as it is, because it was never really supposed to be an album anyway. It's just a group of musicians who loved true country music playing it and having a good time at it, all while having no idea what they were doing that day on Long Island would still be heard and appreciated nearly 40 years later. This might not be the best introduction to Gram Parsons music, although as brief as his catalog is almost any album is as good a place to start as another, but it's a solid addition to the collection of any fan of country, rock-n-roll, or just radio the way it ought to be. Who knows, maybe soon Hot Topic will start carrying "Parsons" tee shirts (oh how I hope not!)
Until next time, enjoy some timeless music and throw on a Gram Parsons record.
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Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels Live 1973
Available here.
