The Meeting that Changed Country Music — Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons in D.C.

Before Emmylou Harris became a renowned musician, singer, songwriter, and activist, she was a D.C. area kid, dreaming of making it big.  Born into a military family in Birmingham, Alabama, Harris moved frequently as a child before her family settled in Woodbridge, Virginia.

From a young age, she was a natural bookworm and overachiever, Harris was a straight-A student, a leader in student organizations, a cheerleader, saxophonist for her marching band, and a dedicated thespian.1 By the age of 16, she was teaching herself how to play guitar inspired by the folk music she heard on WAMU while she did her homework.2

Deeply influenced by the artists she heard on the radio, she sent a letter to Pete Seeger (whose family lived in Chevy Chase) inquiring about if her life was too privileged to connect to folk music.3 As Harris recalled later, Seeger wrote back and “told me in a very gentle way not to worry about life experience and suffering, that it would come my way.”4

His words turned out to be prophecy.

Emmylou received a scholarship to study drama at the University of North Carolina but dropped out after a year and moved to New York City and then Nashville in hopes of making it as a folk singer. But within a few years, she was a divorced single mother living off food stamps and working at a Polynesian restaurant with no time to spare for making music.5 Feeling defeated, she and her daughter left Nashville and moved back in with her parents, who had relocated to Columbia, Maryland.6

Life was not easy but returning to the D.C. area turned out to be one of the best things to happen to her as an artist. Indeed, Washington has long attracted and been a home for a diverse selection of musical genres. While perhaps best known for Go-go and Hardcore Punk, which would emerge in the 1970s and 80s, the D.C. area has a long history of bluegrass, blues and country music.

During and after World War II, many Southerners in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina came to the nation’s capital seeking higher-paying jobs. They brought their musical talents and tastes with them. As musician Mark Schatz told The Washington Post in 2011, “D.C. is such an interesting place because it’s right near the Mason-Dixon Line. You had Southerners who were looking for a taste of home, but you also had these government workers who were interested in folk music, and they came together in this same place. Music has always been this strange catalyst for bringing people from different cultures together. A lot of the material that was written came out of this change in environment."7

As Emmylou Harris recalled later, Washington “was really a fertile ground for music and a wonderful place for an artist to develop their own style and to develop a following because you didn’t have the pressure of being in a music business town. It was more pure, in a way.”8

While living with her parents, Harris filled a couple of slots performing in local nightclubs and soon had a standing gig at Clyde’s in Georgetown. She would only cover and sing folk songs, describing herself as a “purist” to the genre, but the range of her abilities was obvious, and word got around.

In December of 1971, ex-Byrds and Flying Burritos Brothers member Gram Parsons was pursuing a solo career and looking for a harmony singing partner. Parsons’ close friend, Flying Burrito Brothers Bassist Chris Hillman, suggested Harris after meeting her at Clyde’s during the FBB’s tour stop in D.C. As Hillman recalled later, “She was very good. At that time, she was more into that Joni Mitchell-Carolyn Hester folk thing. She had a real innocence about her and she had a really good voice. I told her, ‘You should really sing some country songs; they’re real emotional and would fit you real well.’”9

As the story goes, Parsons was doing a show in Baltimore a couple months later and called Harris’s parents’ house. He suggested that Harris come up to Charm City to meet him. Harris, however, was firm in that, if he truly was interested in singing with her, he would have to come down to D.C.10 It was a rainy night but Parsons and his wife, Gretchen, hopped on a train and went to hear Harris perform at Clyde’s.

When the two met, it was musical love at first sight. Before the second set, he was so ecstatic about Harris’s performance he met her in the back by the beer kegs and then joined her to sing Hank Williams “I Saw the Light” on stage. After the show, the group went back to a friend’s house nearby and kept singing. 

It was the start of a wonderful partnership though it took a lot for Parsons to convince Harris to become rooted in country rock music, or as he would call it, “cosmic American Music.”11 Parsons was a southern raised boy, with a west coast musical influence. Harris was a southern girl, aspiring for the New York City folk appeal, inspired by those like Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez.

Parsons flew Harris out to Los Angeles to sing on his two solo albums “GP” and “Grevious Angel.” Unfortunately, Parsons passed between the releases of both the albums on September 19, 1973. His death was determined to be a drug overdose, caused by the mixture of morphine and tequila. As a result, his two friends committed an automobile-related crime to follow his post death wishes. They stole his body from the airline transporting it to a private family funeral in Louisiana, drove two-hundred miles to Joshua Tree National Park and lit the coffin on fire.12

After Parsons death, Harris returned to Washington D.C., grieving. This was her place of comfort and inspiration.

Harris responded to Parson's death saying, “I felt like I couldn't go on and I felt like I couldn't give it up. What I did was just to plunge myself into work on a real anonymous level. I was in Washington. Nobody cared. It wasn't like I was in LA or something. I just got a band together and started doing all the songs we'd done on stage. And I did it. It wasn't a very inspired thing. It was like therapy. It was like, 'Okay, get up on the bars and walk, five feet every day and maybe at the end of the year you're gonna be able to succeed to walk by yourself'."13

Their friendship lasted just short of two years but influenced the rest of her career as she grew to love the country music genre. In 1973, she signed a solo record deal with Warner Bros. Records (which had been Parsons’ record company).

Now over 50 years later, she holds fourteen Grammy’s, a Billboard Century Award, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008. Her folk dreams, turned into Americana country fame, as she blossomed into the Emmylou adoring audiences know today. Through it all, she kept a thoughtful perspective:

“It seems to me that country music follows us through our lives. You have to get a job, you fall in love – probably unsuccessfully a few times before it finally happens. And then you face losing your job, losing a loved one – the devastating things that can happen to all of us in our lives. Country music has always told that story.”14