Gram Parsons

Gram Parsons, born Ingram Cecil Connor III on November 5, 1946, in Winter Haven, Florida, grew up in a wealthy citrus-growing family, but his childhood was marked by tragedy: his father, a decorated World War II pilot, died by suicide when Gram was twelve, and his mother died of alcohol-related complications on the day of his high school graduation in 1965^[1].

He briefly attended Harvard University before leaving to pursue music full time, and over the following years moved through the International Submarine Band, a stint as a salaried sideman in the Byrds that helped produce the landmark album "Sweetheart of the Rodeo," and the Flying Burrito Brothers^[1]. Across these projects he developed what he called "Cosmic American Music," a fusion of country, soul, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll that is widely credited with establishing country-rock and, later, alt-country as recognized genres^[1]. After leaving the Byrds over objections to touring apartheid-era South Africa, Parsons formed an unlikely friendship with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, reintroducing him to country music during the period the Stones were recording "Exile on Main St."^[1].

His two solo albums, "GP" and "Grievous Angel," were built around his musical and vocal partnership with Emmylou Harris, whom he met in a Washington, D.C. club and brought into his touring band, the Fallen Angels, in 1973^[1]. Harris later said that singing with Parsons was where she found her own instincts as a harmony vocalist, describing a chemistry between their two voices that neither could produce alone^[2], and she has described the closeness of their working relationship in Los Angeles as a kind of protective bubble around the two of them^[3].

Parsons died of a morphine and alcohol overdose in Joshua Tree, California, on September 19, 1973, at the age of twenty-six, shortly after finishing work on "Grievous Angel," which was released posthumously in January 1974^[1]. His body never made it to the funeral his stepfather had arranged in New Orleans: road manager Phil Kaufman and a friend stole the coffin from Los Angeles International Airport and drove it out to Joshua Tree, where they attempted to fulfill Parsons's wish to be cremated in the desert, an act for which they were later fined for stealing a coffin rather than for the cremation itself, since no law covered it^[1].