From the Archives: Gram Parsons, Floridian
Florida’s boom years, for the time being, are over.
Houses, many of which never became homes – relics of cheap labor – sit empty. For the first time since the ’40s, people are leaving the state, and the media’s general view of Florida – its people, its politics and its future – is, to say the least, pessimistic. Stories have labeled the Florida economy everything from “doomed” to a “Ponzi scheme.”
Times, as they say, are hard.
As I have mentioned before, there are not many Florida natives. People move to Florida to run away. They never replant their deep Northern roots in the shallow Florida soil.
A recent documentary produced by Miami’s WPBT, the local PBS affiliate, called “Imagining a New Florida,” mentioned that many Florida residents live much of their lives in Florida, only to die and be buried back up North. Many of these people move to Florida as retired folks, and are happily uninvolved with the local culture. They spend their days by the ocean, and who can fault them? For them – driving their golf carts between the Publix and the course – what meaningful interactions are there to have with the land, to ponder the people, or the history?
On the interior, where the people are often natives, there is a sense of clannishness – life in and around these swampy lands is hard, and they do not spend much time with people not from the area.
So, what good is Florida? What has Florida contributed to American culture? To ask most Americans – and Floridians – the answer would probably be “very little.” Florida, unlike, say, Texas, is not full of residents bursting with pride, and what a shame that is.
Florida has always been set apart from the rest of the nation because of its geographic location and its separate history. Florida is land settled by the Spanish and a home to many American Indian tribes. Its land traded hands between the English, the Spanish and the French. Its history predates United States history. It’s a separate place.
So, many Floridians have a complicated relationship with the state – their hopes and dreams for what it could be are often disappointed by the reality of what it is. Many natives feel the need to leave, to escape. For those great artists and musicians that escape, the conflict of home – both a muse and a tormentor – often shows in their work, like, for instance, the work of Gram Parsons.
Parsons is known for his music – a blend of traditional country and semi-psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll in bands like The Byrds, International Submarine Band and The Flying Burrito Brothers – as well as a legacy of self-destruction that ended, ultimately, with his death at 26 in a motel outside the Joshua Tree National Park 37 years ago this month.
But, before Gram Parsons was a cult legend, he was, as a September 1999 CMJ article said, “a poor little rich boy from Florida cum Harvard theology school dropout.”
There are many books that deal with Parsons’ life, including Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music by David Myer, Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons by Ben Fong-Torres and the soon-to-be-released Cosmic American Roots: Gram Parsons in the South by Bob Kealing. Any of these books will detail the early stages of his life much better and in much more detail than I can here – as do the liner notes for Sacred Hearts & Fallen Angels: The Gram Parsons Anthology – but the highlights go something like this:
Parsons was born to Ingram Cecil “Coon Dog” Connor and his wife, Avis, in Winter Haven, Fla. The couple lived in Waycross, Ga. Avis was part of a wealthy Florida family that owned Snively Groves, a big-time orange operation that afforded the family with plenty of money. His mother attended boarding schools in Virginia and Washington D.C., according to Fong-Torres’ Hickory Wind, and money was never a problem by the time young Gram came along. Gram’s family was, for lack of a better term (in all ways), loaded.
Grievous Angel: An Intimate Biography of Gram Parsons, written by Jessica Hundley and Gram’s daughter, Polly Parsons, puts it more specifically, “Papa John [Parsons grandfather] more or less owned Winter Haven [Snively’s base of operations], whose streets and schools bore the names of various family members.” This wealth wasn’t confined to his mother’s side of the family, though. Coon Dog, despite his backwoods nickname, came from a wealthy eastern Tennessee farming family.
The old stereotypes of Southern “hillbilly” artists don’t apply here – this was landed gentry, which immediately puts Parsons at odds with many of the legends of Florida and Southern music. Unlike Ray Charles, he was white and on the top of the Southern hierarchy. He wasn’t poor, white trash like Hank Williams or Elvis Presley, either. Whatever Parsons wanted was his. He was a rich kid, through and through.
Yet, that hillbilly music found its way through the door of wealth. At nine years old in Waycross, on Feb. 22, 1956, Parsons first saw Elvis Presley perform. Parsons would become a music obsessive – fiercely passionate about his ideology about music – traditional country and folk music especially.
“Parsons said it was rockabilly sounds that first caught his ear in Waycross. Certainly, once he saw Elvis at nine years old that was all it took,” Kealing, author of Cosmic America Roots, said. “Both Winter Haven and Waycross had progressive radio stations that played country and rock and roll. Kids like Gram really didn't have to choose. Music was the great equalizer when it came to kids and social classes.”
This sensibility would apply to race as well – Parsons famously left The Byrds because he refused to play a concert in Apartheid South Africa. This was 17 years before artists began to boycott South Africa. Parsons grew up in the South with Black housekeepers, but he rebelled against those ideas in his music and his actions.
Gram was not alone. For Southerners, these radio stations would be the lifeblood of music development. Mac Curtis, a Texas rockabilly star in the mid 1950s, remembers driving out to the edge of Weatherford, Texas, to pick up AM stations playing R&B, country and rock ‘n’ roll from Lubbock, or Fort Worth, or even Tennessee. The airwaves brought music – country, R&B, rock ‘n’ roll – to young Southern teenagers – rich and poor.
Yet, if those social classes were not evident on the music airwaves, they were ingrained in the dirt. Parsons was still a rich kid with opportunity – music was not his only option, and his parents bankrolled him with plenty of money when he needed it. This combination of country wealth and influence draws Parsons closer to a Texas music legend of similar origin, and of sadly similar self-destructive tendencies.
Townes Van Zandt is among the most revered songwriters in Texas music history.
Guy Clark, Pat Green and Steve Earle – just to name a few – have penned tributes to him, and his records remain standard listening for young Texas songwriters.
Like Parsons, Van Zandt grew up in a town, – in this case, Fort Worth, Texas – that bore the influence of his family. In fact, the Van Zandts were instrumental in the founding of the Republic of Texas. A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt by Robert Earl Hardy points out that Townes was the third-great-grandson of Isaac Van Zandt, was appointed Charge d’Affairs to the U.S. government by Sam Houston.
There’s a Van Zandt historic home in Fort Worth and a Van Zandt county east of Dallas.
But despite their family’s good name and good wealth, both Parsons and Van Zandt would reinvent themselves as ramblers, men who never had a home and never knew a home – a piece of mythmaking that couldn’t be further from the truth.
That’s not to say that Van Zandt or Parsons lived trouble-free young lives, in fact, their lives were fraught with hardship and ache. Van Zandt, always with a penchant for self-destruction, would receive electro-shock therapy after his parents began to perceive him as “troubled.” People close to him would say it changed him forever. Margaret Brown’s excellent 2006 documentary Be Here to Love Me sheds much light on Van Zandt’s early years, and particularly how darkness began to take hold after receiving this treatment.
Like Van Zandt, Parsons’ early life was fraught with turmoil. Coon Dog and Avis were heavy drinkers, and Coon Dog, certainly an alcoholic, committed suicide in 1958 when Gram was 12 years old. Avis would quickly remarry a man named Robert Parsons, a dandy dressing, smooth-talking fellow the Snivelys never cared for and Gram would eventually take his surname. Gram Parsons was the child of alcoholics, and alcoholics live troubled lives because of their addiction. In the end, Avis and Coon Dog both paid for their addiction with their lives, just as Gram ultimately would.
Much of Parsons’ musical development would come at The Bolles School in Jacksonville, Fla., a fancy boarding and finishing school where Gram, like the true Southern gentleman he was expected to be, would spend most of his high school years.
“I think Bolles 1963-65 were among the best years of Gram's life,” Kealing said. “He matured as a musician and poet and was encouraged to pursue artistic endeavors. There was a thriving folk scene in Florida as well as garage bands all over the peninsula. At the same time, his parents encouraged his love of music and even opened up a teen club for him to play.”
That encouragement was short-lived. Avis died on his graduation day from Bolles – dead from cirrhosis of the liver on July 5, 1965.
Fans of Parsons’ music often sense the underlying melancholy and heartbreak. Unlike, say, Hank Williams, though, Gram was not blessed with a voice of immortal power, and yet, he is always able to drive his heartache home with gut-wrenching clarity. It’s the tragedy of Parsons’ life makes those lines “There’s supposed to be a funeral/it’s been a bad, bad day,” from ”$1,000 Wedding”, heartbreaking. Gram knew not just what those lines meant; he knew how they felt, and his voice delivered them with an unwavering emotional clarity. It’s that quality that attracts so many people to Gram’s music.
Books have been devoted to Gram’s life, and more will be. From these origins, he would become a music legend, unleashing a hybrid of country rock that would be watered down and turn the Eagles into multi-millionaires. Though his Burrito Brothers band mate Bernie Leadon eventually became an Eagle, Gram never cared for them – called them “plastic dry fuck” – but the Eagles loved him. The band would listen to Parsons’ music and quite literally take notes.
So, how do you measure the influence of Gram Parsons’ music?
The Byrds had been largely in Bob Dylan cover band mode until Parsons joined the group in time for Sweethearts of the Rodeo, a traditional country record that confounded the record-buying populace at the time, but has since become a classic touchstone in the evolution of country-rock. Later, he turned Keith Richards on to traditional country music at a pivotal point during the recording of the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street album. For all anyone knows about the sessions, he might have even played on the record.
And, of course, Parsons would discover Emmylou Harris performing in a Washington D.C. club and bring her on the road with him, all the while exposing her to a larger audience. She would also be featured on his two solo albums, GP from 1973 and 1974’s Grievous Angel.
Those are just the moments when you can see how Parsons directly affected the entire course of rock ‘n’ roll history. Forget that when you see Jeff Tweedy wear a nudie suit with Wilco, he’s referencing Parsons’ famed marijuana-leaf nudie suit, made by Nudie Cohn himself. Or that Ryan Adams built a career out of Parsons’ music – even featuring Emmylou Harris in two duets on his debut CD Heartbreaker.
“Gram, like Gene Clark and Jack Kerouac, wore his emotions on his sleeve,” Kealing said. “He had a vulnerable, confessional way of singing and writing that crosses generational lines; his songs speak to universal truths and feelings. Gram was effortlessly cool, respected the true bluesy side of country music and assailed the phony, slick Nashville way that many still loathe and rebel against today. He's a rebel, a visionary and musical pioneer.”
Parsons is more than just a legendary Southern musician; he’s among the greatest Florida musicians of all time, and his vocal phrasing and musical tones invoke the state.
On “She,” from GP, Parsons says that she “came from the land of the cotton, a land that was nearly forgotten by everyone,” but the warm, slow-cooking sound is more at home in the Florida orange groves.
Unlike many artists of the late ‘60s and ‘70s that would electrify and beef up traditional forms of Southern music, Parsons had an expressive, if at times, thin, voice. He lacked the grit and muster of Robert Plant or Mick Jagger or even fellow Southerner Levon Helm. What Parsons possessed (Like Helm, it should be stated) was a grasp on Southern vocabulary and conversational structure that was totally authentic.
Anyone who has ever spent time with Southerners from the country will recognize this conversational structure: A negative truth followed by a positive truth. Yes, she did come from the hard-bitten land of cotton, and yes, that area has been ravaged by time. But, on the other hand, she was an excellent singer. A rancher might talk about a long-since-gone helper by discussing his penchant for late nights and wild women, but end by saying, “Yeah, but he sure could load hay.”
Parsons, for all of his personal mythmaking, was a truth-teller in his music.
“Brass Buttons,” one of Parsons finest songs, found on Grievous Angel, details his mother’s descent into alcoholism with a harrowing first-person understanding that reveals a son traveling the same path. Parsons refers to the “warm night and pale mornings,” a turn of phrase so effortless it could only be lived to be written, on one side, invoking the humid evenings of central Florida, while also referring to the drunken nights and hungover mornings alcoholics spend their lives cycling between.
Once again, there is a view of the particularly unique Southern experience that Gram lived. There are no moonshine jars, no guns, no howling at the moon, just brass buttons, green silks and silver shoes. The wealth is evident in his description. Gram’s mother slips away quietly, over the course of several evenings.
Once again, there is nothing particularly “Southern” or “Floridian” about the disease that claimed the life of Gram and his parents – and those that look for it there are misguided, prejudiced or both. And truthfully, much of Gram’s “Southern sensibility” is found in the hillbilly music conventions that Parsons uses to wrestle with the death of his mother.
While “Brass Buttons” is certainly a ballad, it’s not a torch song. It’s a slow and easy song in which you can almost feel the Florida breeze blowing through the windows.
The geography would also play an integral part in the songwriting of Gram Parsons. In one of his most famous songs, “Return of the Grievous Angel,” Parsons says that he’s “out with the truckers, the kickers and the cowboy angels.” Though some saw it as something out of an old Nashville song or the desert of the American West, Parsons saw his fascination with trucks as a nod to his home state.
“A friend of mine told me that was the Florida in me coming out – that it didn’t have anything to do with Tennessee – my fascination with trucks,” Parsons would say in an interview, “coming from two places, sort of Florida and Georgia. There were a lot of straight roads in Florida. I always wanted to get myself a big truck and just whistle right down the Sunshine State Parkway, just double-clutching my way.”
Parsons will undoubtedly continue to inspire music and books. His presence will continue to be felt, and as his music and life reach new listeners, so will the scent of oranges, and those big trucks riding down the Sunshine State Parkway.
A great introduction to Parsons’ music is Sacred Hearts & Fallen Angels, a two-disc anthology that collects much of his best work from all of his bands—The Byrds, the Burritos and his solo career.
