sweetheart of the rodeo

The Byrds departed from an ambitious album concept to focus on traditional music during the recording of this seminal country rock masterpiece.  During the recording of their previous album 'The Notorious Byrd Brothers', David Crosby and Michael Clarke had left the band and remaining members  Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman hired sidemen to fill the void.  Hillman asked his cousin Kevin Kelley from the Rising Sons to play drums.  Gram Parsons, who had recorded 'Safe At Home' with the International Submarine Band earlier that year, passed an audition on piano; although he would focus on guitar.  

Parsons would later recall:    "Being with The Byrds confused me a little. I couldn't find my place. I didn't have enough say-so; I really wasn't one of The Byrds. I was originally hired because they wanted a keyboard player. But I had experience being a frontman and that came out immediately. And [Roger McGuinn] being a very perceptive fellow saw that it would help the act, and he started sticking me out front."

The sessions started at Columbia Studios in Nashville, TN and then continued at Columbia Studios in Hollywood, CA with producer Gary Usher.  The album features Roger McGuinn on acoustic guitar, banjo, and vocals; Chris Hillman on electric bass, mandolin, acoustic guitar, and vocals; Gram Parsons on acoustic guitar, piano, organ, and vocals; and Kevin Kelley on drums; with  Lloyd Green, and JayDee Maness on pedal steel guitar; Clarence White on electric guitar; John Hartford on banjo, fiddle, and acoustic guitar; Roy Husky on double bass; and Earl P. Ball and Barry Goldberg on piano.  During the Hollywood sessions, Lee Hazlewood filed a suit against Columbia contending that Parsons was still under contract to his LHI record label.  As this was being resolved, McGuinn rerecorded some of the vocals for songs on which Parsons had sung.  

Gary Usher reveals:   "McGuinn was a little bit edgy that Parsons was getting a little bit too much out of this whole thing...He didn't want the album to turn into a Gram Parsons album. We wanted to keep Gram's voice in there, but we also wanted the recognition to come from Hillman and McGuinn, obviously. You just don't take a hit group and interject a new singer for no reason...There were legal problems but they were resolved and the album had just the exact amount of Gram Parsons that McGuinn, Hillman and I wanted."

McGuinn describes the original concept for the album and how it changed:   "a chronological album starting out with old-time music. Not bluegrass but pre-bluegrass, dulcimers-nasal Appalachian stuff and then get into like the 1930s, advanced version of it, move it up to modern country, the 40s and 50s with steel guitar. [leading up to] electronic music..a kind of space music. It was a nice idea but harder to pull off than think of ... Graham kinda speared it into the country direction. I heard him as a jazz piano player. It took us a while to get a head of steam going with the country theme. I really liked it -- it was fun. I certainly enjoyed it. We went out to Nudie's, the rodeo tailor, and got some cowboy clothes and hats and I got a Cadillac, an El Dorado, and it was like a role  ... The Byrds had experimented with country music as early as our second album 'Turn! Turn! Turn!'with tracks like 'Time Between, 'Satisfied Mind' and 'Girl With No Name', but it wasn't until Chris Hillman met Gram Parsons at a bank in Beverly Hills and brought him over to our rehearsal studio that we decided to go to Nashville and record an entire album of country material. We were in love with the genre and as sincere as we could possibly have been, in recording those songs.  Our rock audience felt betrayed and the country community was weary of 'hippies' infiltrating their territory. I remember seeing the 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo' cover on a bulletin board at a country radio station in Los Angeles. I was overjoyed . . . until I got closer and saw written in red DO NOT PLAY - THIS IS NOT COUNTRY."

Parsons was not happy with the final result and would leave the group before the end of the year:   "They had to pull a few things out of the can that weren't supposed to be used, things like 'Life In Prison' and 'You're Still On My Mind'. We just did them as warm-up numbers. We could've done them a lot better. They just chopped up the album however they wanted to.  He (Roger McGuinn) erased it and did the vocals himself and fucked it up. The producer (Gary Usher) decided it should go Hollywood freaky, and it wasn't the time for that. I thought it was the time for a 'Nashville Skyline' or something like the album as I remember it, a serious country album. It was a great album that might as well have never been recorded."

Hillman considers:  "The 'Sweetheart' thing was interesting; it's not my favorite Byrds' album. It's a noble attempt, and then when Roger had to do Graham's vocals over, it was affected. He knows how I feel. It's not Roger's thing to do that. Roger's strong in other areas where none of the rest of us are strong, but to do a country thing with a sort of strange, country accent became very affected and it lost it all. But, it was okay. Even my cousin played pretty good on that and he wasn't too good a musician. I know it left a good lasting legacy. There's a lot of times I run across young players who say, ''Sweetheart of the Rodeo' was what got me into country music.' You know, these guys were active, professional musicians."

'Sweetheart of the Rodeo' only reached number seventy-seven in the US and failed to chart in the UK; but it has gone on to be an enduring classic.  







http://www.thebyrds.com/



http://www.ibiblio.org/jimmy/mcguinn/


http://chrishillman.com/

http://www.gramparsons.com/








You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q21BF38W3Gs










Pretty Polly
(Chris Hillman / Roger McGuinn)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKoh9xreYjM









'Sweetheart of the Rodeo' full album:



0:00 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Bob Dylan)
2:41 I Am A Pilgrim (traditional, arranged Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman)
6:27 The Christian Life (Charles Louvin, Ira Louvin)
9:01 You Don't Miss Your Water  (William Bell)
12:56 You're Still On My Mind (Luke McDaniel)
15:26 Pretty Boy Floyd (Woody Guthrie)
18:06 Hickory Wind (Gram Parsons, Bob Buchanan)
21:44 One Hundred Years From Now (Gram Parsons)
24:46 Blue Canadian Rockies (Cindy Walker)
26:54 Life In Prison (Merle Haggard, Jelly Sanders)
29:45 Nothing Was Delivered (Bob Dylan)