Have you ever wanted something so badly that you willed it into existence?
There’s a distinct sadness to any conversation that involves Gram Parsons. Dead at 26, he beat the average by a year. He grew up with alcoholic parents, and his mom drank herself to death right around when he graduated from high school. He got into Harvard but dropped out early.
And yet, if you trace his short music career, you see an arc that is indisputably brilliant. He started a sixties rock band that got signed by Lee Hazelwood. He got hired as a sideman for The Byrds and ended up taking over the structure of their album and changed its nature. His next band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, had a rocky success but fired him in England, so he just went and hung around with the Stones in France while they recorded Exile On Main Street, and then he got booted from hanging with Keith Richards for doing too many drugs (WHAT) so he came home, and reached out to a young singer named Emmylou Harris, and recorded his first solo album heavily featuring her vocals and helping launch her stardom.
In all of these moments in his life, the thread that tied them together was a passionate love for country music. Though he was born in Georgia, it wasn’t until his failed stint at Harvard where he first heard Merle Haggard that his obsession was sparked. The Byrds Sweetheart Of The Rodeo was supposed to be an exploration of American music but Parsons as a hired player persuaded the group to move to Nashville and record a full-on country album. When he was hanging in France, Keith would wander up from the Exile recording sessions and the two of them would sit for hours playing obscure country tracks and trading guitar licks. And when a young Washington D.C. area singer came to sing on his album, Emmylou Harris describes it as the first time she really gave credence to country music as a genre and credits Gram for showing her the beauty in it.
Parsons isn’t a star player — adept at many instruments, he never really mastered any of them to be a virtuoso. He also wasn’t a breakout vocalist — his voice is reedy, wavers in pitch, and sits high in the mix. The thing he had more than anyone else, however, was a passion for country music.
“Streets Of Baltimore” isn’t a Parsons-penned tune — it was co-written by Tompall Glaser and Harlan Howard — and he wasn’t even the first to record it. Bobby Bare made the song a hit in 1966, as a downtrodden ballad about a lovelorn fish out of water story. Like any great country hero, however, it’s about the singer, not the song.
The songwriting is pristine: in perfect verse with a beautiful conservation of language, the story follows a man who sells everything in Tennessee to bring his girlfriend to Baltimore, a city she loves. He describes how they would go out at night, and about how much she loves the nightlife, and about how he was reluctant to follow and tired from his factory job, but starting to like it, too. Then, as the song progresses, the narrator realizes that he’ll never hold a place in her heart the way the city does, so he leaves.
While Bare’s vocals are best described as “maudlin” by some (hint: me), Parsons takes a tonal approach that changes the entire interpretation of the lyrics.
Bare’s narrator is easy to picture downtrodden on the street, pawing over what happened while illuminated in a single streetlight, kicking dust and feeling sorry for himself.
Slightly more upbeat, sung with a carefree abandon, Parson’s story is told from someone on a train who’s moving back but looking forward to what’s next. He’s less of a man-done-wrong and more of a partial observer to a blossoming life he can’t be a part of. There’s a sadness in things not working out, but Parsons’ casual vocals, the song’s clippy pace, and the band’s momentum make the woman in the song the subject rather than the narrator.
It’s a song now about transitions, how to handle them, and how to keep moving. For a Gram, who battled his whole life to sort through transitions while battling substance abuse, it seems a fitting tribute to a man who loved country music so much he willed himself into being an artist.
“Streets Of Baltimore” on Apple Music.
“Streets Of Baltimore” on Spotify.
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There’s something to be said about Gram Parson’s career as a country artist. He’s often credited as the genesis of “country-rock” or “alt-country” because he loved letting his influences steer his music from all directions. At its core, though, it’s easy to see that everything he did was really just a take on the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, as style of country music defined by its genre melding moments. Really, what defined Gram Parson’s as “country-rock” or “alt-country” was the fact that he was, to the country music establishment, and outsider. He didn’t grow up with the classic country youth you hear about in songs, but then again, most country singers didn’t. And if you have a mom who drinks herself to death, well, to quote David Allen Coe, if that' ain’t country…
There’s a sort of permission that comes from relabelling Gram Parsons as an artist. Everyone gets to have their way: the country music establishment can appreciate the interloper without having to adopt him, and the rock and roll listeners can play his music without having to admit they like country. All of this is fine and dandy, but for someone like Parsons who really, really just loved country music, well, I think that can be soul crushing. When Merle Haggard dropped out of producing GP, it crushed him. It was as good of a sign as any that Parsons would never be accepted as the thing he longed to be, and for someone with substance abuse issues, it’s hard to imagine that this outsider status didn’t contribute to his early overdose death.
The other thing worth talking about here is the classic country divide between singer and songwriter. Country music has the absolute best songwriters, and the reason for that is because it’s a business engine the way modern pop music is. There are thousands of people working to make their nest egg off of penning just one good hit, so the talent pool is deep. At the same time, performance is key in country music. Just look at George Jones, a man who never really wrote a song in his life.
There’s also about 5,000 words that can be written about how some of country music’s best songwriters are performers (Dolly Parton, Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn, etc.) but you’ll still see them record cover after cover, respecting the history of country music songwriting.
“Streets Of Baltimore” is an example of absolutely perfect songwriting. Every couplet perfectly nails meter and rhyme scheme in such an effortless way that we get the story told to us in a literary narrative more than pop lyrics. Harlan Howard shares a credit with Tompall Glaser on this song, but it’s Howard who carries the torch of the country music songwriting tradition. He wrote Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces,” collaborated with Buck Owens on a few songs, and “Busted” which Johnny Cash made famous on Live At Folsom Prison. He coined the classic definition of a country song being “three chords and the truth.”
And yet, if we look at his career as one of the most famous country music songwriters, there are really only just a few recognizable hits for casual country fans, “Streets Of Baltimore” being one of them. There’s not much analysis here for that system, as much as it is to say, the talent pool in country music is wide and deep, and the industry really only needs you for what it wants, and then good luck .