Gram Parsons: Safe At Home On Fire On The Mountain

Parsons in 1973

Fifty one years ago tonight, park rangers at Joshua Tree National Monument - now a national park - noticed a huge fireball on the ridge at Cap Rock. Upon investigation, they found a flaming coffin and the partially burned remains of Gram Parsons, a 26 year old musician who would become a music legend. He had died a day earlier after being found unconscious in his room at the nearby Joshua Tree Inn following a day fueled by alcohol and drugs. His death was the just the beginning of a series of bizarre events ending with his burial in the Garden of Memories in Metairie, Louisiana.

Cap Rock jshyun/Flickr/Creative Commons License

In his brief fast and loose life as a musician Parsons imagined a new sound blending rock, country, R&B, and gospel. He called that sound "cosmic American music." If you listen to his seven years of work with The International Submarine Band, The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Emmylou Harris, you can hear that sound emerging.

And then there is Emmylou Harris. She loved him dearly. Here is In My Hour of Darkness, a song they wrote, here performed with harmony from Linda Ronstadt.

Earlier this year Emmylou Harris turned 77. Fame has been kind to her given such a long and successful touring and recording career. She's brought quality entertainment to millions of people since the beginning in those early days with Graham Parsons. We'll never know where the two of them would have gone together in the world of music but it's safe to say it would have been far. Here is a song she and Bill Danoff wrote as a tribute to Parsons:

In a few hours, the pilgrims will trek to Cap Rock to pay their respects to Parsons as they have for decades. Rangers may close the area, but that won't make a difference. The faithful will be there.

For more on the Gram Parsons story read his comprehensive Wikipedia entry with many links to his discography as well as a direct link the the entry on his death.


Safe at home, Gram, safe at home.






Sources

Text:
post title, adapted from Boulder to Birmingham

See Tonight's Harvest Moon, A Supermoon, And A Partial Eclipse

 

The moon, like a flower in heaven's bower, with silent delight sits and smiles on the night.

                                                                William Blake

This full moon is special because it coincides with its orbital perigee or closest approach to Earth. That makes our moon appear larger, thus, we know it as a supermoon. They actually occur about four times a year and tonight you'll be able to enjoy it along with a partial eclipse beginning just after 10:00pm Eastern Time.

From the mountains to the sea Georgians should have a spectacular view of the Harvest Moon this year. For many years I was fortunate to witness September's full moon emerge from the sea. It was always a sublime event powered by the realization that you were a witness to a sensory immersion experienced by coastal inhabitants for thousands of years. The simplicity always amazed me. Here was a man, a strip of sand, a plain of water, all under a dome of sky and caressed by the touch of wind and the sound of surf. Add the rising moon and expect the surreal. The experience was so powerful even when friends were along the conversations almost always stopped in homage when the first moon sliver rose out of the sea.

Lowcountry moonrise, McQueens Island, Savannah, Georgia, 1951

. . .Her eyes, he says, are stars at dusk,

Her mouth as sweet as red-rose-musk;

And when she dances his young heart swells

With flutes and viols and silver bells;

His brain is dizzy, his senses swim,

When she slants her ragtime eyes at him.

Moonlight shadows, he bids her see,

Move no more silently than she.

It was this way, he says, she came,

Into his cold heart, bearing flame.

And now that his heart is all on fire

Will she refuse his heart's desire? . . . .

Tonight when the harvest moon is climbing high, go outside. Take a friend or someone you love. Get lost in it.




Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
National Park Service, Fort Pulaski National Monument Handbook, 1954

Text:
intro quotation, William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience, originally published in 1789.
poem excerpt, Conrad Aiken, "Turns and Movies: VI. Violet Moore and Bert Moore"

Mel Torme: A Singer "Too Little Known And Vastly Under-Appreciated"

Scott Johnson, my kindred spirit when it comes to music history, posted a belated birthday tribute to Mel Torme on Powerline a few years ago. He rightfully described Torme as "one of the great all-time American artists, too little known and vastly under-appreciated." A few of the songs he mentions may not load correctly but you can hear them by going directly to You Tube. Many readers may not know the artist - he passed away in 1999 - but they would certainly recognize one of his most famous compositions, The Christmas Song, from its opening line, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...." That song is one of around 300 Torme wrote but in addition to his singing he also contributed to the world of entertainment as a composer, arranger, musician, actor and writer over his 65 year career.

Although I've had a life-long interest in popular music and jazz I never much listened to Torme until his death. After hearing so much praise for him in remembrances from the industry, I began listening more carefully to his performances and soon developed an appreciation of his crisp timing, perfect pitch, impeccable diction, and playfulness. Here's a fine example of the master at work with his idol, Ella Fitzgerald, in an unforgettable moment in jazz performance.

And just in case you want to associate "The Velvet Fog" with his signature song - he called it his "annuity" - here is Torme performing it late in his career.

There's no question that Mel Torme, one of he earliest singers of what the music industry would know as "cool jazz", left quite a mark on the world of entertainment. For that we're pleased to remember him on his birthday, September 13, 1925. What memories we have of the man and his music.

H. L. Mencken: Keen Observer Of The American Experience

After all these years, the Sage of Baltimore - Henry Louis Mencken - still has so much to tell us about the American experience. In his day he invented the term "booboisie" to refer to the masses who didn't read much, know much or even care much about their lives as citizens of a democratic republic. Today we could easily apply his term to the masses who are well-schooled but not well-educated, who apply emotion rather than reason and logic to their decision making, and who align themselves with coalitions of self-interests wrapped in collectivist totalitarianism. Another term for the modern-day "booboisie" is "moonbat". I think Mencken would have a even more colorful term for them if he were still with us. And oh would he have a time with our political and social landscape today.

Mencken portrait photo taken around 1923

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost office thereby.

Henry Louis Mencken, the "Sage of Baltimore," was born on this day in 1880. He was a leading journalist and author on the American scene, humorist, and a student of the American language. Mencken's stature seems to be on the rise over the last few decades. I'd guess it's because we experienced a concurrent rise in many nation-wide opportunities to watch logic, practicality, and skepticism destroy a multitude of political pretenders and their policies regardless of political persuasion.

Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time.

Mencken (right) celebrating the end of Prohibition in 1933

As much as I enjoy reading all of Mencken's work, the autobiographical books remain my favorites. His three-part "Days" series, Happy Days (1940), Newspaper Days (19441), and Heathen Days (1943) should be essential reading. They cover life and times from birth through 1936, the most productive and positive time in his life. After the mid-1930's, Mencken fell a bit out of fashion as his curmudgeonly persistence began to grind on the American psyche. His perceived sympathy with German nationalism helped undermine his reputation into the 40's. In one of the great ironies in American literature, a stroke in 1948 rendered him unable to read, speak or write beyond simple phrases or sentences. Although he regained some communications skills over time, he spent the next seven years enjoying music, listening to readings, and conversing with friends until his death in 1956.

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

Those who want the full Mencken story should read Terry Teachout's, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken (2003). Teachout was a superb writer who treated his subject with objectivity and warmth. I also enjoyed a biography, Mencken: The American Iconoclast (2005), by the eminent Mencken scholar, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers.

If reading isn't to your liking but you still want some immersion into the man and his times, C-SPAN's American Writers Project produced a fine two-hour program on Mencken that should not be missed. It is a thorough multimedia exploration.

Mencken at home a few months before his death

I'm the third generation in my family to consider Mencken a favorite writer. Though the author as skeptic likely played a role in his popularity over the years, I think the humor sold him to the family - certainly has in my case. But there is a sad note to this story. In 1959 - I was 13 that year - two family members who were among the first generation to appreciate Mencken passed away just one day part. My dad was the executor of this challenging estate. The late relatives had shared a large home with other brothers and accumulated seventy years of cultural history within its walls. It seemed the only thing that left the house was weekly trash. Included in that history collection they retained were thousands of magazines. No institution or person wanted them as they had not yet achieved a patina of age, worth or "significance." I was given the responsibility of burning them and in doing so I watched a near complete, mint collection of The Smart Set and The American Mercury magazines rise up in smoke on a cold winter day. Both magazines were under the editorship of H.L. Mencken early in his career and featured many new writers who were to become famous in the decades to follow. Today, the collection could bring as much as five figures at a major literary auction. So much wisdom up in smoke. If the Sage of Baltimore were alive today, he would not be happy at this outcome, nor would he be surprised...

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Sources


Photos and Illustrations:
1923 portrait, public domain
Mencken celebrating, Baltimore Sun
Mencken at home, Baltimore Sun

Quotations:
Democracy is.... "Notes on Journalism," Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1926;
Puritanism is.... " Sententae," The Citizen and the State, p.624;
If, after I.... "Epitaph," from Smart Set (December 1921);
No one ever.... paraphrase of the "Democracy" quote as noted in The Yale Book of Quotations (2006)

Patsy Cline: The First Female Performer In The Country Music Hall Of Fame

The Maryland-Virginia area has produced a number of entertainment celebrities over the years. Just last week, I posted about Arthur Godfrey, an early television star whose name is rarely recognized today. There was another tremendous star that rose out of the region in the 1950s. Arthur Godfrey made her a national star, and that star, Patsy Cline, still shines bright all these years after her death in a plane crash in 1963.

Patsy Cline, Nashville, 1962

Never met Patsy. Never knew anyone who did. But I did grow up with her music often hearing it over the radio all day at our family's summer haunt in Burlington, West Virginia. The village was on U.S. 50, just a dozen ridges and forty miles west of her first home in Gore, Virginia and a tad farther from her birthplace in Winchester. Perhaps it was too far to claim her as a hometown girl, but the locals loved her and talked often about how proud they were of a country kid who made it big.

Cline was born on this day in 1932. In her brief recording career of eight years she had a powerful influence as one of the most successful country singers to cross over into popular music. The depth of that popularity can be measured by her Guinness World Record for having the most weeks on the U.S. charts for any album in any genre by a female artist: 722. Out of the total, 251 weeks were at #1 with Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits, originally released in 1967. Here is a sample of that greatness:

Cline also took this Willie Nelson song to #1 on country charts in 1961:

Over sixty years after her passing music fans still appreciate her amazing vocal technique and sincere, soulful sound. That makes the world of American music a far richer experience. I hope that appreciation continues for years to come.






Sources


Photos and Illustrations:
Les Leverett, WSM Studios, Nashville