A Texan perchance?

Nay, not a Texan.

I shall be so pleased if I finally stumped the experts.

Well I'm gonna guess anyway and just say who I think it ought to be:

Kinky Friedman

Donavan has to be the dude on the left!

Sitting at the table, you mean?

No one has gotten this yet?? It's Gram Parsons.

Damn. I was going to give it til midnight then declare myself the high priestess of all Southern musical knowledge.

I dig your taste in music, Donnah. And while Gram was the man (to me, ''Sin City'' is one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded), in my humble opinion, ''country rock'' was born with Johnny Cash's ''Live at Folsom Prisom''. Regardless, it's a shame that Gram was remembered more for his death than for the beautiful music he created. ''You don't miss your water'' and "The Christian Life'', off ''Sweetheart'', still kill me. ''Gilded Palace'' remains one of the greatest albums ever recorded.

I'll have to disagree with you there, YO. Both "Folsom" and "Sweetheart" came out in '68. I think California hippie musicians were more influenced by the Byrds than they were Johnny Cash.
As far as musicology goes, most date Country Rock to Gram's previous album before he joined the Byrds. The one called "Safe at Home" by the International Submarine Band.

You got me there, Donnah. I forgot about the International Submarine Band.

"Sweetheart of the Rodeo" is my vote for the landmark release...

As to Gram Parsons, another of my neighbors from Polk County who I actually saw perform in his second band group when I was a preteen child and he and they were at our Saturday night bigdeal dancer thing in town, my mother chaperoning and me there because of it, limited to handing out ice cold bottles of grape and orange soda and cokacolas...he lived about ten/fifteen miles from me. Oh, and they performed, "Louie, Louie" in our tiny community hall that held about fifty teens and me and mother and all those sodies.

The Legends! That was his second band, while in high school in Winter Haven, FL. My mom knew his mom...

Suzy, that is beyond cool. What a fabulous memory.

What ever happened to his sister, do you know? Not the half-sister, Diane, but the real sister, who I think was named Avis after the mother.

Great Post Donnah,
I love your taste in music as well ,I grew up playing Flying Burrito Bros and Poco among many others.I am surprised nno one guessed Keith Richard s in the photo above .MAybe because he just looks to healthy...
Cheers from Hurricane Alley

I was just pleased that after a lot of hunting, I'd found two pretty rare photos: The Byrds on stage at the Opry and Gram with Keith in France.

CMT lists the Byrds's Opry appearance at the #32 most important moment, or whatever, in Opry history, but doesn't have a photo.

Keith was working diligently on his ravaged look, but wasn't quite there yet when the pic was snapped.

I saw a photo of the Byrds at Opryland just the other day...if I find it again, will copy and send to you (I think it was on the 'official' Gram Parsons' website, not sure now).

I don't know as to his sisters, since my mother knew his mom and I didn't know the full family -- was a new teen by that time or even barely that.

Anyway...was trying to remember the very clear image in my oldest memory of the first time I ever saw Gram Parsons, time and place.

I should go write about it on my blog, that and the earlier thing copied as to the bigdealdeancer thing with the Lancers performing (which was also about one in only two times we ever had a "live" band at that place, those Saturday nights in summers).

But I do remember first seeing Gram Parsons and remember it very clearly. This is the heart of that memory, truthfully, and occured as I'll share it here long, long, long before Gram Parsons was 'famous' and long before by a tad before I was womanly -- even on the way to womanly.

I went to my mother's work with her one summer because she made me (happened a few times a month during the summer's). She was a nurse with a local Opthalmologist, who, being it Winter Haven small town America, also was an optometrist and there were all these eye glass frames in cases that my mother would let me entertain myself with when no patients were there, trying them all on, fawning over the looks, as long as I washed my hands first and was careful to recreate the display just as it was before I had my way with the frames. And the mirror, I had to make sure no fingerprints were left afterward.

Anyway, I'd been back there fawning over myself in various frames and two people entered the waiting room and mother made me go to the waiting room to read magazines ("put them back just the way you found them!" was the going request when THAT was the entertainment) while this very well dressed woman came into the examining anti-room where all the frames and cases and mirrors were.

So I went into the patient waiting room in my little shorts and pageboy blond haircut, with washed hands and careful approach to the waiting magazines, and there was the most beautiful, perfectly organized, well suited and stunning male I'd ever seen at that age. Given that he was, also, a child otherwise, to my view, since he was older than me, I was the child and he, he was this beautiful boy, tall and composed and quiet and spellbinding. I'd never seen anyone like him.

And...I sat and watched Gram Parsons look through magazines with me, no words between us, just peace and me captured by his beauty -- for he truly was beautiful -- right up until his equally startling mother came through the room, taking him with her out the front door, down the hallway past the candy shop, and off into Florida's hot summer.

And me, I went to mother and asked, "WHO was THAT?"

"Mrs. Parsons and her son, Gram."

Another delightful memory. Thanks, Suzy. The guy had everything going for him: incredible talent, intelligence, money, and looks. He also had way more emotional baggage than he could carry.
Too much of everything.

He seems to have been doomed by his mother's medication issues, as she was by hers before that. Combined with the many deaths of significant people in his life...I do believe the death he experienced was not something he'd anticipated, and yet, I realize that by the level of drug and alcohol abuse he'd been living with by that time, it's more than likely that he hadn't a plan for life otherwise.

An intensely consumed and burned life was Gram Parsons, no doubt about it. Still and so special, so very, very special.

It's peculiar but, on my last day of highschool there in Central Florida (my mother transferred me in the last few months of my senior year to a northern one out of Central Florida), my school took me over to a lawn beside the Parson's home for a photo they included in the foreward to the high school annual. I still have no idea why they did that.