in order to build connections to more legitimate roots, some rock musicians tried to graft those same rough edges onto their own ridgeless pop styles. In the process, both types created music that was neither authentic nor innovative, but was a mild, occasionally charming contrivance.
But Sweetheart of the Rodeo itself remains apart from the clichéd and shallow music inspired by it: It still sounds real and powerful. The difference was Gram Parsons, the only true innovator to emerge from the jumbled milieu. A native southerner, he had grown up with coexistent passions for old-time country and rock 'n' roll and began making music with these passions intact. Parsons used the Byrds as a vehicle for his grand design: to wed pure country music to a new audience.
Parsons never made contact with that hoped for audience, but he made some great music. His six albums—from the formative Safe at Home by his International Submarine Band through the final heartbreaking Grievous Angel—include literally every noteworthy work to be associated with the country-rock movement. The difference between Parsons and the rest was partly his awareness and understanding of the tradition he was carrying on, but it was mostly the feeling: He was connected to pure country in a spiritual way, and he could communicate what he felt with singular vividness.
If Parsons's haunting music never reached a sizable audience, it deeply touched a succession of worthy musicians, and Parsons made the most of each partnership: with Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman in the Byrds; with Hillman, Sneeky Pete and Chris Ethridge in the Flying Burrito Brothers (whose Gilded Palace of Sin remains the crowning achievement of the milieu); and finally with Emmylou Harris on his two solo albums, GP and Grievous Angel.
Now Emmylou Harris is incorporating Parsons's convictions into her own work, and she talks candidly about what the partnership gave her in terms of both knowledge and inspiration. Harris isn't a lifelong country devotee even though she grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. But while working with Parsons, she caught his fever for the rigidly expressive, high-droning sound of old-fashioned country as introduced to her by Parsons on the records of people like Lefty Frizzell, early George Jones, Hank Williams and especially the great harmony duos, the Louvin Brothers and the young Everly Brothers.
On her own Harris has, like her old partner, bypassed Nashville altogether, preferring to work clubs with her band in her present home area, W
