Cash on the Barrel Head by The Louvin Brothers / GRAM PARSON Live! / The Tuttles with AJ Lee

 I first heard this fabulous song from of course Gram Parson from a live track with a favourite Roger Jim McGuinn song (that I first heard Richard Thomson’s do on a tribute to the Byrds album I think) Hickory Wind segued right there . . . . but didn’t know it was this early . . . now we like The Louvin Brothers ( from the album Handpicked Songs 1955-1962 ) even if we might prefer The Delmore Brothers and Wayne Rainey but hey this’ll do

To Gram and then right on round with the peerless AJ Lee and the extraordinary youngsters The Tuttles

The Louvin Brothers - Cash on The Barrel Head

Gram Parson - Cash on The Barrel Head/ Hickory Wind

and of course what goes around comes around. . . . . . . 

The Tuttles  with AJ Lee- Hickory Wind

A Book About A Missing Film? Or A Film About A Missing Book? | GRAM PARSONS : SATURATION 70 | DANGEROUS MINDS by Richard Metzger

 ‘SATURATION 70’: 

STORY OF THE LONG LOST GRAM PARSONS SCI FI MOVIE TOLD IN NEW BOOK

by Richard Metzger

Richard’s intro reads:

"Six years before Alejandro Jodorowsky’s extraordinary but ill-fated 1975 attempt to film Frank Herbert’s Dune—the story of which was compellingly told in the recent documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune—there was another similarly ambitious and ground-breaking film project that, until recently, was largely unknown.

Saturation 70 was a special effects-laden science fiction movie starring Gram Parsons, Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and Julian Jones, the five-year-old son of Rolling Stone Brian Jones. Unlike Dune, Saturation 70 did actually make it into production and was shot, but never completed, then was forgotten and undocumented for over forty years.” read on . . . . . 

dangerous minds

Preorder Saturation 70: A Vision Past of the Future Foretold HERE.

UNCUT THE BRILLIANT POP CULTURE MAG have done an article on it!

here . . . . .

SONG OF THE DAY: BOULDER TO BIRMINGHAM - EMMYLOU HARRIS

Emmylou Harris: Boulder to Birmingham - from Pieces of the Sky, 1975

Universally accepted that this was written in memoriam to Gram Parsons on her coping with the grief it left her after his death in 1973  and it stands as one of the most haunting songs about loss and grief ever IMHO. 

I don't want to hear a love song
I got on this airplane just to fly
And I know there's life below me
But all that you can show me is the prairie and the sky

And I don't want to hear a sad story
Full of heartbreak and desire
The last time I felt like this
I was in the wilderness and the canyon was on fire

And I stood on the mountain
In the night and I watched it burn
I watched it burn, I watched it burn

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face

Well, you really got me this time
And the hardest part is knowing I'll survive
And I come to listen for the sound
Of the trucks as they move down out on 95

And pretend that it's the ocean
Coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean
Baby, do you know what I mean?

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face
If I thought I could see, I could see your face

After Parsons’ death, Harris was reeling and inconsolable. She had already established herself as an impressive interpreter of song, a legacy cemented by her exquisite second solo album, 1975’s Pieces of the Sky. It contained just one Harris writing credit, Boulder to Birmingham. Composed with Bill Danoff, it helped her work through the loss of Parsons.

“That song was very important,” says Harris, whose connection with the married Parsons was artistic and emotional, not physical. “Words can be so powerful to help you express something you otherwise can’t. And everyone has experienced loss, so even though the song is deeply personal, I can understand how people can relate to it, having lost someone who is very close to them.” It took Harris until the 80s to be able to write about Parsons again, and she still speaks about him with tenderness.

Marissa Moss (The Guardian)

Cash On The Barrel Head - Louvin Bros (cover!) - for Jobe!

This just because . . . . . . . well largely for Jobe after he posted the authors of Cash on The Barrel Head in the Louvin Brothers and after Gram and his band were booed off the Grand Ole Opry they fairly won folks round  . . .  eventually  . . . . . but it came too late!

Two favourite songs . . . . . . included with this one Hickory Wind

Women of Rock - Margaret Fisher

Margaret Fisher & the Extraordinary Death of Gram Parsons

'Margaret Fisher' ©️ Robert Altman

Margaret and country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons dated while attending the same high school in Winter Haven, FL, during the early 1960s. They decided to stay friends after finishing school and into Gram’s music career for the next decade. In September 1973, Margaret and Gram rekindled romantically after the songwriter separated from estranged wife Gretchen Carpenter. 

Gram Parsons had been hanging out at the Joshua Tree National Monument for several years — he went there regularly, with Chris Hillman when they were bandmates, and later with Keith Richards, to get high, commune with the cactus, and watch the sky for UFOs. He reserved two rooms at the nearby Joshua Tree Inn, a modest cinder-block motel whose owners had come to know Parsons after several visits. Along with Parsons on this trip were his “valet” and chum, Michael Martin; Martin’s girlfriend Dale McElroy (no fan of Gram Parsons); and an old friend from his high school days in Florida named Margaret Fisher. The events of that trip have been recounted by Dale McElroy, who told her story to Ben Fong-Torres when he was writing Hickory Wind, then retold it in her own words in Phil Kaufman’s 1993 bio. Other accounts differ, but hers seems the most reliable. The foursome arrived Monday, September 17, 1973. That day they indulged sufficiently that Martin returned to Los Angeles the next morning to score more marijuana — even though Martin theoretically went along on the trip so he could look after Parsons. Parsons dragged the women out to the airport for lunch, throughout which they drank Jack Daniels non-stop and following lunch, Gram managed to find some heroin while in town. He topped off this party with some morphine that he managed to score from another person who was staying at the hotel that knew Gram. 

Early in the evening of the 18th, Fisher, drunk herself, showed up at McElroy's door in a panic shouting that 'Gram's overdosed". McElroy and Fisher returned to find Parsons collapsed on the floor, his breathing shallow and his skin had turned blue. After using an old street remedy for an overdose, (via an ice cube enema!), they had revived Parsons who was up and walking around his room. McElroy returned to his room. A few hours later, Fisher asked McElroy to sit with Parsons while she went out to eat. McElroy went to Parsons room where she sat and read while Gram slept. As the night wore on, it became evident that Parsons was having a tough time breathing. When McElroy checked on him, she realized he was in serious distress. Now in a panic, McElroy thought that there was no one left in the hotel at this point and never called for help. She had no training in CPR but she tried to revive the now collapsed Parsons by pounding on his chest and delivering mouth to mouth. After a half and hour, Fisher returned to the room and realized that Parsons was probably beyond help and called an ambulance. 

 Margaret was the first person to notice something was off with Gram’s unconscious state and in particular his breathing after he took morphine following at least 6 shots of tequila earlier that evening though they all had reportedly been drinking Jack Daniels all day and had at some point consumed the heroin also that he had scored earlier. A deadly combination and in my experience an often fatal combination as the alcohol shuts down the senses and the heroin can lead to respiratory issues, collapse of the lungs and eventually stop any breathing at all. The two substances cause increased shallow breathing, lowered blood pressure and heart rate, and deep sedation that can lead to a coma or brain damage and death. 

It was of course likely to have been pain free. It is likely that this is what killed Jim Morrison in Paris a couple of years earlier in 1971 having been out drinking ( allegedly moderately) that night and mistaking Pam's (Courson) stash of heroin for cocaine took a fatal overdose. Snorting what he presumed was a safe but substantial amount of cocaine with alcohol is survivable if a resistance has built up but not if it is a commensurate amount of heroin. Morrison it is said hated heroin and Pam kept her habit by then secret from Jim. I have lost several clients to this deadly combination taken drunk it is often fatal. In fact, the overwhelming majority of heroin overdoses are caused by combining the drug with extreme sedatives like alcohol.

It was said that Margaret who seems to have been experienced in drug use successfully revived him for nearly an hour with the ice cube enema routine, and they walked him around the rooms until he fell unconscious again and failed to wake up the second time. 

Parsons was transported to the Hi-Desert Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 12:30 AM on September 19th, 1973.

Gram Parson 'burial' site

memorial outside room no.8

cleaned up site of where the body was allegedly burned

Footnote:

             Margaret also previously attended the ill-fated Altamont Music Festival in December 1969, where Gram’s band the Flying Burrito Bros were one of the few acts to actually have a peaceful crowd. 

She’s also featured in Gandulf Hennig’s documentary Fallen Angel (2004).

Sources: Guitar Tricks.com, Phawker.com, 

Disappearing bodies - The strange story of Gram Parsons' funeral - desertusal

I stole Gram Parsons' body - louder sound

rehab guide - alcohol and heroin