Gram Parsons and "Cosmic American Music"

The idea that Gram Parsons had greater cultural standing or was a less "encompassing" figure (whatever that means) than Elvis was at any point in Gram's life.is ridiculous. Elvis was a hugely successful touring artist and had huge hits in the 70s while Gram never got beyond playing clubs and never got any airplay to speak of in his lifetime.

4 decades after both died, Gram is certainly more respected among a small subset of Country Rock fans. But still has at best 1 tenth of a percent of the name or music or voice recognition that Elvis does. Put on some obscure Elvis album track that has never been played on the radio and from his voice alone 100x more people will be able to identify it as Elvis than would recognize any song with a Gram vocal as being sung by Gram.

An argument could be made that Elvis still has the most widely instantly recognizable voice in music.

 

You could add to that that my wife and I venture to guess the rest of you guy's wife's have never requested to be taken to a Gram Parsons Impersonator Show. But Gram's outfits were better.

 

The discussion as concerns Presley was for the period that was contemporaneous to Parsons's. Not his overall career, which is what you seem to be talking about. I don't recall anyone here saying Parsons had "greater cultural standing", either. Whatever that means.

I used the term encompassing to describe what musical references were included in Parsons's music AT THE SAME TIME.

And again you bring out the tired warhorse of overall popularity.

Since you are inclined to make this discussion more about Presley's overall career, about which you seem to have rather strong opinions, I suggest we are done here.

 

I was speaking of Elvis in the late 60s and early 70s. Elvis had hits and major tours in that period. I quoted the passage comparing their overall cultural standing.

During Parsons life his highest profile achievement was singing 2 songs on the Byrds first flop.

 

I was listening just this morning to Dwight Yoakam's recent album Second Hand Heart. I am not sure just how far Dwight carried this particular form of country beyond what Parsons had laid out. But it's interesting over the course of his career how Dwight has incorporated some pretty hard rocking tunes a la Rolling Stones into his albums. One is She:



I think Parsons would approve.

But the real question I have is just how much of this is going on now. I suppose one could argue this type of song (depending how wide your definition is of its type) is fairly common among performers who fall under the country label today. But how many are like Dwight Yoakam who consciously do so?

Maybe others here have some current performers in mind who might fit that description.

 

At the time of Parson's career Elvis had his big comeback, he changed the way rock was presented by taking it to Vegas, he showed that there could be such a thing as a second, adult career for rock and roll, he had major hits, two very successful TV specials. He recorded all kinds of different material -- swamp rock, Euro ballads, country rock, the grand (and even grandiose) American trilogy, socially conscious tunes like "In the Ghetto," gospel music, kinda neo rockabilly, Chuck Berry tunes. Whatever "encompassing" means in terms of both range and scope of musical references and cultural impact and visibility, Elvis had as wider or wider a range of music that he absorbed and performed and a much, much wider audience including plenty of counterculture types -- Robert Christgau was writing about Elvis for the Village Voice in '69; Lester Bangs was writing about Elvis in Rolling Stone in the early '70s.

 

So this is an Elvis Presley thread?

 

To be clear I am not a fan of Presley's later period, and so am not nearly as familiar with it as you are. And this is a thread about Gram Parsons and the definition of Cosmic American Music, so I am reluctant to participate in a thread derail making it about Presley and his later career.

Perhaps instead you might want to revisit an old Hoffman thread where czeskleba argued the opposite of what you are saying here, saying

In the last five years of his life, Elvis basically recorded music from three sources:
1. New material written for him and pitched directly to him by his publishers or Felton Jarvis
2. Covers of rock-n-roll, r&B, or country oldies
3. Covers of recent country hits.

There are exceptions, but I'd bet 95% of the material he did in 1972-77 fits in one of these three categories. My point being, Elvis was not seeking out obscure new stuff by cutting-edge artists. His awareness of new music primarily extended to what was hitting on the country charts.

Here's the link:

Why didn't Elvis record anything from Gram Parsons?

So if you so desire you and he can have at it over there.

Finally I have been clear that by encompassing I have meant that Parsons brought in a wide variety of subjects and genres other than just melding country with rock. Any fair minded person reading my posts here would understand that is what I mean by it.

 

The last five years of Elvis' life though is mostly a different period -- that would be 72-77; this is more like '68 - '73 , which are the years that correspond to Gram Parson's activity. Parson's period of activity mostly overlaps with Elvis' peak "comeback" years from '68-'71 (after that things started to slip), when he was recording more obscure and newer stuff -- like "In the Ghetto" and "Suspicious Minds," and absolutely at the peak of his game.

I dunno what subject matter Parsons touched that Elvis didn't in those years. Parsons was covering Tom T. Hall and the Louvin Brothers and the Bryants and Harlan Howard and Tompaul Glaser, basically the same kind of newer and older country material Elvis was doing; he was doing R&B tunes and pop tunes by the like of the Bee Gees (Parsons did "To Love Somebody" Elvis did "Words"), pretty similar to what Elvis was doing; and he was mostly writing lost love songs and songs about pining for other kinds of loss -- Elvis was hitting contemporary topics of like on "In the Ghetto" he was, if obliquely, speaking to social upheaval of '68 in "If I Can Dream." I really don't see that Parsons was covering either a wider variety of genres -- he was covering pretty much the same genres in the same degree -- or a wider range of subjects.

 

It is a thread about the definition of "Cosmic American Music." You've suggested Elvis's late 60s/early 70s stuff is not CAM, and others of us have debated you on that point. It is a debate that is completely relevant to the thread topic, regardless of your wish to suppress it.

Yes, thank you. The relevant Elvis period here is 1968-72, when he was re-energized about his career and interested in trying new things and breaking new ground. Elvis in his final five or so years was a different story... he'd lost interest in recording and was in the throes of serious drug addiction which derailed his focus and the quality of his work. If we want to analogize to Parsons, Elvis of 1973-77 is comparable to the Parsons of 1970 to mid-1972, the obvious difference being that Parsons was able to get himself together and record a couple more great albums before dying, while Elvis was not.

 

I have been a fan of Parsons for years. In that time I have been aware of his reference to the term Cosmic American Music. I frankly have not thought much about that term, but did from time to time think about other performers who have been influenced by him and to an extent overlap his musical focus. By that I mean some similar mix of genres and his approach to music overall, keeping in mind that I do not think it fair to say he "merely" mixed country and rock.

In that whole time, right up until reading the fourth post on this thread, I have never heard anyone refer to Elvis Presley as a follower of or within the concept of Cosmic American Music. Yes it is common knowledge Parsons played with people like Burton who also played with Presley. And I know Parsons saw Presley perform at an early age. But those facts merely suggest Parsons may have been influenced by Presley. And to some extent built upon connections with those musicians (on the latter point he also jammed with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards).

It is fair to say that this connection between Presley and Cosmic American Music is not widely seen by others. Perhaps you have some examples. In fact the thread I linked was one here on Hoffman that most posters agreed there was little or no reason to think Presley knew much if anything about Parsons and what he was up to.

That leaves two takes on this discussion that are most reasonable.

One, which I think may appeal to you, is that there was nothing special about Parsons in his approach to music or about this whole notion that he was onto something different, whatever label one would apply to it.

The other is that to the extent there was something special about him, something new, it was not something that had any meaningful overlap with what Presley was doing. And no I don't mean overlap in the sense that at one time Presley had a number of different influences that he put together. I mean in the specific sense of what Parsons was doing.

I have no issue if you want to continue having at proving the second take wrong, and that there was meaningful overlap. But, Presley "breaking new ground", assuming that is true, does not really prove they were doing the same thing. Maybe you might succeed in persuading others here, other than Chervokas, that in fact they were, but I doubt you will succeed.

Much more important is that I do disagree with anyone asserting there was nothing special about Parsons.

 

Cosmic American Music = Grateful Dead
Believe it if you need it
If you don't just pass it on
It's just a Box of Rain.
Or a ribbon for your hair

 

Well, the connection between Parsons and Presley is a straight line to the point where Parsons hired Elvis' band to back him -- Tutt, Hardin, Burton, Gordy, he basically just hired the TCB band.

I like Parsons as a songwriter and performer, but I think his "specialness" and in particular "unique" qualities of his blend of musics into "Cosmic American Music" have been vastly overblown. It's me probably who introduced Elvis into the discussions when I wrote in this thread "I always just thought "cosmic American music" was Parson's description of his own personal blend of soul, country and rock. It's basically a post-hippie stoner version of Elvis' musical mix. Like when you think of Elvis in his comeback period playing everything from "Johnny B. Goode" to "From a Jack to a King" to "Any Day Now" to "Precious Lord" to originals the blended all those influences together, played with a rocking band with Ron Tutt and James Burton and Glen Hardin, but now imagine it played by people 10 or 15 years younger who were like 18 when the Beatles hit and took different drugs from Elvis."

That's still the way I see it. It's not a genre, it's Parson's own self-aggrandizing description of the kind of Americana that was at the heart of rock and roll since Elvis' Sun sessions.

I do think of course that there are many differences between Parsons and Presley and that the "cosmic" part of Parsons' aesthetic was not really part of Presley's thinking. And sonically Presley's presentation was bigger and slicker and part of a pre-hippie conception. But that blend of musics Parsons was toying with was as old as rock itself.

Parsons was a talented songwriter and he put over a song with a kind of vulnerability people found really appealing (I think he was a bit of a johnny-one-note emotionally), and he made some good records and even on great one (Gilded Palace of Sin). But "cosmic American music" was his personal marketing plan, not really a unique genre of music separate from the long line of rock, country, soul, gospel, bluegrass and jazz that led to the moment of Parsons' arrival.

If someone can't see that thread and the overlap with the blend that Elvis, I dunno, seems as plain as day to me.

 

Huh? I thought Hillman was a devout Christian...

 

Listening to CSN&Y last night and Teach Your Children came on -- I checked credits and Jerry was on the pedal steel...and that song has some amazing pedal steel guitar!

 

Care to elaborate on your comment?

 

Well, take a look at some of Slayer's album titles:

Slayer discography - Wikipedia

 

Read the article....his kid likes them. He thought it might be cool if they did some bluegrass tunes.... he didn't say he was a rabid fan and wanted to join the band. Also a Christian can't intersect artistically with secular musicians? Where is the line of acceptability?

 

Well so's Tom Araya and he's actually in Slayer so...

 

And Alice Cooper and look at that mess of songs....

 

I read the article. Like the poster I responded to, I thought it was funny - in the sense of odd - that Hillman would joke about wanting to record an album with a band as outwardly provocative in a religious context as Slayer ("God Hates Us All"). I'm sure that Hillman routinely interacts with secular musicians, so that's not what I was getting at.

 

Yes, so I've heard, even though I'm not a fan.

 

Careful the Gorts might swoop in.....

 

Back to Dwight Yoakam...

I think the reason he does not so obviously fit within the conception Parsons had, while clearly being influenced by him, is that Dwight quite simply had something else in mind. To be crude about it I think he has been trying to mix the Parsons approach with a more backward looking, or traditionalist if you prefer, approach. I am specifically referring to the presence of that sort of Tennessee mountain music that crops up here and there.

Dwight of course is self professedly a proponent of the Bakersfield sound, which Parsons shared much overlap with as well. But as a long term fan of Dwight's, it is obvious to me that Bakersfield is not the sole extent of his influence.

On balance and to be clear I do not think Dwight Yoakam is someone you could call a disciple of Gram Parsons. But I would not rule out in choosing the focus of his music that he has done so with thoughtfulness. It must have occurred to him that a different approach than the one he followed might have been open to him. In the end he is definitely worth mentioning as someone who came later that was much influence by Parsons, but whether that means he should be seen as an ongoing purveyor of the Cosmic American Music approach is worth considering, even if one concludes he has not been all that much in it.

 

Gram Parsons’ Cosmic American Trip | Pitchfork