Gram Parsons "GP"

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#134 in the Series) is Gram Parson’s, GP.

I was shocked to see that I hadn’t featured Gram Parson’s as of yet.  He’s one of my all-time favorites.   I did feature him as part of The Byrds, Sweethearts of the Rodeo era.

GP was Gram’s first of two studio albums.  Grievous Angel was the second and could have been as easily featured as GP since they are both outstanding pieces of music.

GP was home for some of Gram’s most wonderful moments.  He was in excellent voice in this era.  Give a listen to some of the slower moments of the disc including ‘A Song For You, Streets of Baltimore, She’ or ‘The New Soft Shoe.’ Gram never sounded better.

There are some nice up tempo songs here as well. Those would include ‘Still Feeling Blue, We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning’ and ‘Big Mouth Blues.’

Gram will always hold a very special place for me in the landscape of American music.  He was one of, if not the, first to bring country music to the rock and roll field.  He would play albums of the early country greats to the hippies in LA until they ‘Got it.’  Without his influence we may never had heard the likes of bands like his own ‘Flying Burrito Brothers’ or ‘New Riders of the Purple Sage, Poco, Heartsfield, The Eagles, Pure Prairie League, etc etc.’

GP was produced by Blind Faith bassist Rick Grech. It was released in 1973.

Unfortunately, Gram would leave us by the end of that year.

Listen to the masterpiece of She or Song For You (Including a short interview with Gram) or the up tempo, Still Feeling Blue.  I’ve just recently added an old black and white live video of Gram and EmmyLou signing Streets of Baltimore.  It’s not the best quality but I felt people would like to see it.

Track listing

All songs written by Gram Parsons unless otherwise indicated.

Side One

1. “Still Feeling Blue” – 2:40
2. “We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning” (Joyce Allsup) – 3:13
3. “A Song for You” – 4:58
4. “Streets of Baltimore” (Tompall Glaser, Harlan Howard) – 2:53
5. “She” (Parsons, Chris Ethridge) – 4:59

Side Two

1. “That’s All It Took” (Darrell Edwards, Charlotte Grier, George Jones) – 3:38
2. “The New Soft Shoe” – 3:54
3. “Kiss the Children” – 2:57
4. “Cry One More Time” (Peter Wolf, Seth Justman) – 3:38
5. “How Much I’ve Lied” (Parsons, David Rifkin) – 2:29
6. “Big Mouth Blues” – 3:52

Personnel

• Gram Parsons – vocals, acoustic guitar
• Emmylou Harris – vocals
• Barry Tashian – vocals, rhythm guitar
• Ric Grech – bass guitar
• John Conrad – bass
• Ronnie Tutt – drums
• John Guerin – drums
• Sam Goldstein – drums
• Glen D. Hardin – piano, organ, bandleader
• James Burton – electric guitar, dobro
• Al Perkins – pedal steel guitar
• Buddy Emmons – pedal steel guitar
• Byron Berline – fiddle
• Alan Munde – banjo on “Still Feeling Blue”
• Ron Hicklin, Tom Bahler, Mitch Gordon, Lewis Morford – backing vocals on “Kiss the Children”
• Hal Battiste – baritone saxophone on “Cry One More Time”