I didn’t know who Gram Parsons was until I read about his death and cremation. During the funeral ceremony for Gram’s close friend Clarence White - the Byrd guitarist - Gram was overheard stating that when he died he would like to be taken out to The Joshua Tree desert of southern California and burned. After a legal battle which saw White fined for burning a perfectly-good coffin Gram’s partially burned remains were finally laid to rest in a modest cemetery near New Orleans, LA.

Parsons is credited for inventing the genre “Country Rock.” Up until then country stars were covered in tassels and sequins and tried for the cowboy look. And there was a deep valley between country and rock, although this was just on the surface. Johnny Cash and Conway Twitty were 50’s rock and rock guys before they went mainstream country. Parsons “infected” the Byrds and Rolling Stones.

After David Crosby left The Byrds, Chris Hillman asked Parsons to join them. Their next album was all country and they recorded in Nashville. The album, Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, was a breakthrough in pop music. Now more than 25 years later it is considered a classic (and I have an original copy in vinyl!)

Gram Parsons, Kim Kinrade

In 1969 Parsons and Hillman formed the Flying Burrito Brothers with Chris Ethridge on bass and Sneaky Pete Kleinow on steel guitar. Their album The Guilded Palace of Sin modernized the Bakersfield style of country music popularized by Buck Owens and the band appeared on the album cover wearing cowboy suits emblazoned with all sorts of hippie accoutrements. This was a period of great drug uses by Parsons and he succumbed to a mixture of alcohol and morphine on September 19, 1973, just a week before Jim Croce died in a plane crash.

He is forever credited for starting the country-rock movement that was so eloquently exploited by groups like The Eagles. My Man, on The Eagles album On the Border was a tribute to Parsons written by his former Burrito band member Bernie Leadon.