GP (Album)

Occupation

GP is the first solo album by Gram Parsons. The country-rock album was released in January 1973 on Reprise Records.

Genesis

After his involvement with The Byrds, the International Submarine band and the Flying Burrito Brothers, Parsons decided to release a debut solo album. Originally Outlaw Merle Haggard should produce the album, but he refused because he for a "hippie " held Parsons, which lacks the earthiness of country music. Instead committed Parsons Haggard's engineer, Hugh Davies and produced the album with the help of Ric Grech itself as backing band he wanted to win the backing of Elvis Presley. On the album, then James Burton (guitar) and Glen D. Hardin (piano / organ), three members of the TCB band involved with Ronnie Tutt (drums ). Glen D. Hardin was the musical director of the backing band and was responsible for the music on the album. With the then-unknown Emmylou Harris Parsons had a duet partner found, which later launched a successful solo career.

The recordings took place from September to October 1972 in the West Coast studios of Capitol Records and Wally Heidler Studio 4 instead. The album was released in January 1973. Following Parsons formed a live band called Fallen Angels, from Emmylou Harris, Kyle Tullis, ND Smart II, Neil Flanz and Gerry Mule existed and was promoting the album.

Music style

As with his previous band experiments Parsons tried his own version of country rock, which he called " Cosmic American Music " designated to implement on this album. By Glenn Hardin's musical direction and the integration of double-barreled guitar parts makes the album one hand, a throwback to the country music of 1950er/1960er years dar. addition to more traditionally oriented country songs as How Much I've Lied, Kiss the Children and Still Feeling Blue wrote with She and A song for You Parsons also gospel -like songs that dealt with his Christian beliefs. The song Big Mouth Blues is autobiographical and is considered by many often referred to as the New York version of Sin City ( Flying Burrito Brothers). In addition to original compositions are with Streets of Baltimore ( Bobby Bare ), That's All It Took ( George Jones and Gene Pitney ) and Cry One More Time ( The J. Geils Band ) cover versions on the album.

Title list

All songs were written by non-labeled Gram Parsons.

A-side

B-side

The album was re-released in 1990 along with the successor Grievous Angel on CD.

Record label Genre Hollywood Outlaw country Gospel music Autobiography Tompall Glaser Harlan Howard Chris Ethridge Peter Wolf
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