Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel is the second and final solo studio album by Gram Parsons, recorded at Wally Heider Studio 4 and Capitol Studios in Hollywood during the summer of 1973 and released in January 1974, four months after Parsons died of a morphine and alcohol overdose at the Joshua Tree Inn on September 19, 1973, at age 26^[1]. He never lived to see it released.

Emmylou Harris, who Parsons had recruited as a harmony singer and duet partner, appears on eight of the album's nine tracks, and Parsons reportedly wanted the record credited to "Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris" in recognition of how central she had become to the sound^[2]. The sessions drew on musicians from Elvis Presley's touring band, including guitarist James Burton, pianist Glen Hardin, and drummer Ronnie Tutt, alongside Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon, steel player Al Perkins, and fiddler Byron Berline^[2].

The album mixes newly written originals, most notably the opening track, with older, unfinished songs and a pair of country and pop covers, giving it the feel of a scrapbook assembled under time pressure. Despite that, critics received it as a fully realized artistic statement; AllMusic called it "remarkably strong" given the circumstances of its completion, and it is now widely regarded as a foundational document of what Parsons called Cosmic American Music, his fusion of country, soul, and rock^[3]. Commercially it made little impact on release, peaking at only number 195 on the Billboard 200^[3], but its influence on subsequent country-rock and Americana artists has far outlasted its initial chart performance.