Gram Parsons: Brass Buttons

Yes, you do like country music. No, not the big hat, overly twangy baritone voice kind. Not the this small town is good enough for us kind; the we have kids but we still like to tear it up on a Saturday night kind. Not the flag and pick up truck kind.

The Gram Parsons kind. Gram Parsons: Baby-faced Harvard dropout, and son of Southern money. Drug buddies with Keith Richards, and co-creator of the sound of "Wild Horses." Originator of Country Rock, or as some put it, Cosmic Country, with his friends in the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Harmonizer with Emmylou Harris. Possessor of a soulful fragile voice, the opposite of what we hear now. Drug casualty, dead at age 26 in 1973.

I have loved this song forever, but never knew till recently what it was about. It's a sharing of impressionistic memories of his deceased mother who died too young from booze. "It was a dream much too real / to be leaned against too long."