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Winds of Tragic Loss
Gram Parsons, and Ben Fong-Torres’ Hickory Wind
“On a Saturday in mid-March [1965], Gram visited Jim [Carlton] in Winter Haven [FLA] and, warming up for the following week, ran through a handful of folk numbers. Jim’s tape recorder caught a spirited version of Shel Silverstein’s ‘Hey Nellie Nellie’ and a gentle reading of Tom Paxton’s ‘Last Thing On My Mind.’
The next Saturday, the Shilos [one of Gram’s many pre-Byrds bands] booked an hour at the campus radio station at Bob Jones University, a religious college in Greenville [SC]…The group was strictly business in the studio. Station WMUU gave them two microphones…With no mixing or overdubbing facilities, Gram, singing lead on all nine songs, simply stood close to the mike while the others leaned back and forth to sing their parts” (Fong-Torres, Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons, St. Martin’s 1998, 51).
The tapes of these sessions were included in the Sierra Records release, Gram Parsons: The Early Years, 1963–1965.
WMUU still exists and it features a podcast called “Eagle Forum” founded by Phyllis Schlafly. I wonder if the station, which mainly features Talk, Gospel Readings, and Christian Viewpoints, is at all aware of whom it hosted almost 60 years ago. And if it is, how and why it ever took such a chance?