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Country rock pioneer
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Songcraft and emotive vocals elevated Gram’s act
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Gram Parsons
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 veteran named Coog Dog Connor, he grew up in the lap of luxury. At age nine, he learned to play the piano. His main musical inspiration was having seen Elvis Presley perform that year at a local auditorium. By age twelve he had begun strumming the guitar. At that point of time, 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 fourteen, 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 outfit played a few shows in New York, then relocated to L.A. There they got to play a cameo role in Roger Corman’s film The Trip. By the time Parsons recorded the ISB album Safe at Home, the band called it quits and he made the album with session players. Soon after its release, Parsons met Chris Hillman and through him joined The Byrds. His association with The Byrds lasted only three months, he quit refusing to join the band’s tour to South Africa, reportedly due to his opposition to Apartheid. In late 1968 he and Hillman, who also left The Byrds, formed the Flying Burrito Brothers.
In 1970 Parsons, after recovering from 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.
Following a brief tour with his band, The Fallen Angels, Parsons returned to the studio to record Grievous Angel. It was just completed when, in September 1973, Parsons overdosed on a mixture of morphine and tequila while relaxing at a favourite desert retreat near the Joshua Tree National Monument, California. He was pronounced dead after being rushed to a hospital nearby. A few days later, his coffin, en route to New Orleans for the 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 wished that his ashes be scattered at Joshua Tree in the event of his death. With his wracked, emotive vocals and his compelling C&W songcraft, he was a major influence on a variety of artists ranging from Emmylou Harris to Keith Richards to Elvis Costello. Though he hated the term "country rock" and the kind of music the term came to define, Gram Parsons undoubtedly pioneered the genre.
A. GEORGE ANTONY
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