WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Joy and sorrow were in harmony at a musical tribute to Gram Parsons, the country-rocker who on Saturday will enter the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 53 years after his death at age 26.
At the legendary Los Angeles-area Troubadour club, Parsons’ songs as a member of the Byrds, as a founder of the Flying Burrito Brothers and as a solo artist essential to rock's early 1970s turn toward country were performed Wednesday night by
Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, the Black Crowes and, most important by far, Emmylou Harris.
In a partnership that lasted less than two years, Parsons and Harris combined to create some of the most heartaching harmonies ever recorded. Then he died from an overdose in 1973.
Before she sang a song many consider the pinnacle of that partnership, “Love Hurts,” with Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Harris said, “Gram taught me this one. We did it a lot of times.” Then she added, quietly as if to herself, “But not enough.”
Harris, who had been an unknown folk singer when Parsons met her at a club in Washington, D.C., had thought she'd spend a lifetime singing with him. She instead went on to her own stellar country career, and lent the harmonies she'd once given him to Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and Neil Young.
Her career was part of Parsons' legacy, and Wednesday night's show was as much a tribute to her as it was to him. Now 71, she sang his songs with three rock Hall-of-Famers: Costello, Crow, and Campbell, and with many others in a rotation of musicians that at times felt like a happy hootenanny as much as a memorial.
Parsons will enter the Hall of Fame, fittingly, as a recipient of the Early Influence Award. He never had a hit record, but he was like a pied piper of country music for rockers. Everyone he touched came away a little more honky-tonk, from his fellow members of the Byrds, who went all-in on country after he joined, to his friends the Rolling Stones, who let him and his Flying Burrito Brothers record their “Wild Horses” before they did. He'd become a gateway drug into country for subsequent generations of musicians and fans.
“Though his time with us was too too short, his influence remains immeasurable,” his daughter Polly Parsons, who helped organize the tribute, said from the stage. “Without Gram, the entire landscape of alternative country and Americana would not exist in the way that we know it today. He showed us, and he showed the world, that country music could be cool, poetic and cosmic.”
Costello, for many decades a big Parsons booster, said that one of the songs he performed Wednesday night, “Big Mouth Blues,” he hadn't done on stage since he was 19, and another, “Hot Burrito #1,” he hadn't played since he was 18.
Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes proudly said that, like Parsons, they were from “the blue state of Georgia” before he and his brother Rich sang a rollicking version of Parsons' “Lazy Days,” backed by longtime California country rockers Beachwood Sparks, who served as the house band for the night.
Singers Jim Lauderdale, Margo Price, Grace Potter, Madison Cunningham, Harper Simon, Graheme Lesh and Jesse Walsh also sang Parsons' songs in various combinations.
All the artists squeezed onto the tiny stage at the end to perform “Wild Horses” and a song Harris wrote with Parsons, “In My Hour of Darkness.” She sang her verse of the song surrounded by his family.
