The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (34 page)

An African-American baritone, Paul Williams had been friends with fellow-Temptation Eddie Kendricks since their schooldays in Birmingham; the pair were keen sportsmen as well as budding vocal performers. Moving with his colleague to Detroit, Williams found his abilities as a singer, dancer and bass guitarist in demand: completed by Kell Osbourne, their three-man doo-wop act was noted by manager and keen-eyed scout Milton Jenkins, and from thereon a bewildering sequence of name changes sealed their destiny. Jenkins named them first The Cavaliers, then The Primes, then - having amalgamated them with a band called The Distants – The Elgins. A fruitful meeting with Motown head Berry Gordy would see that the moniker established on the front lawn was – finally – The Temptations.

Although he was also a dab hand at choreography, Williams as frontman was not making The Temptations an especially easy act to break. Fortunes changed for the better with the introduction of the younger David Ruffin in 1963. (The move did have a silver lining for Williams in that it also brought about the firing of singer Elbridge Bryant, who had physically attacked him after a show the previous Christmas.) With Ruffin pushing Williams into the background (and Smokey Robinson offering tunes to the band), the hits began, like magic, to emerge. The pinnacle for The Temptations at this stage was the enduring 1965 chart-topper ‘My Girl’. Paul Williams occasionally found himself leading some of the tunes – though these were more often than not fillers rather than group standards. A lifelong sufferer from sickle cell anaemia, Williams’s poor health – and consequent alcohol and drug abuse – saw him less and less involved with the group, and his final marching orders arrived in 1971. Despite The Temptations’ success during the sixties, the group had been underpaid for many years because of poor business practice. A father of four, the singer thus wound up broke and depressed. He was found in his car in a deserted parking lot, just minutes from Motown’s Hitsville Studios, wearing swimming trunks, the pistol in his hand a clue to the manner of his death.

The Temps naturally flourished, and in 1989 were named America’s favourite soul group by the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Within six years, however, a further three of them – David Ruffin
(
June 1991),
Eddie Kendricks (
October 1992)
and Melvin Franklin
(
February 1995)
– would also be dead.

See also
Elbridge Bryant (
October 1975); Ali ‘Ollie’ Woodson (
May 2010). Three later Temptations have also passed on.

SEPTEMBER

Wednesday 19

Gram Parsons

(Cecil Ingram Connor III - Winter Haven, Florida, 5 November 1946)

Gram Parsons & The Fallen Angels

The Flying Burrito Brothers

The Byrds

(The International Submarine Band)

(Various acts)

Was Gram Parsons the first crossover country-rock star? Certainly, with his flowing locks and sparkling ‘Nudie’ suits, Parsons was the first country-influenced musician to
dress
like a rock star. Yet the word ‘star’ represents something of a paradox: other than during his brief spell with The Byrds, Parsons barely sold a record during his lifetime. Parsons was, however, a mightily blessed talent who had more love and enthusiasm for his musical heritage than he did for most of the individuals with whom he came into contact. Parsons’s undoubted spirituality was reflected in his death in a motel room at Joshua Tree National Park – not to mention the truly odd aftermath.

Despite being born into considerable wealth, Parsons’s character was moulded by tragedy met in his formative years: his father, Coon Dog, committed suicide with a .38 at Christmas in 1958 (Gram and his sister were later adopted by Bob Parsons), and his mother, Avis, died mysteriously seven years later amid alcohol problems. The young Parsons’s enthusiasm for music had begun with the country strains of Merle Haggard and The Kingston Trio – not to mention the emergence of his idol Elvis Presley. His desire for a ‘look’ manifested itself as early as age fifteen, when Parsons and his school-friends dressed in suits to perform as The Shilos. A year later, he joined The Legends, a ‘proper’ band that featured future hit-makers Jim Stafford and Kent LaVoie (Lobo), as well as Parsons’s future collaborator Jon Corneal.

But Gram Parsons cut an increasingly wayward figure, failing in his studies at Harvard and dropping out. Parsons had no financial insecurities, however, therefore music – initially in the shape of country-rock pioneers The International Submarine Band, whom he had met while at high school – became the single thrust of his existence. Parsons’s reputation grew during time spent in New York and certainly travelled faster than any record sold by The ISB. In LA, in 1968, he was invited to join The Byrds. Even though he was with them for less than six months, Parsons influenced their
Sweetheart of the Rodeo
album to such a degree that it halted the downturn in the fortunes of one of the States’ biggest bands. (Parsons’s tenure with The Byrds was ended by a disagreement with frontman Roger McGuinn over a tour of South Africa; although it appeared the country-lovin’ Parsons was displaying unexpected left-wing tendencies, it is more likely that what caused him not to make the trip was his new-found friendship with Rolling Stone Keith Richards, with whom he would later spend more time than with most of his own bands.)

Gram Parsons: Posing in his ‘nudie’

‘He was a victim of the times. He wasn’t doing anything anybody else wasn’t - he just didn’t have the constitution to be a rock ‘n’ roller.’

Gretchen Parsons, Gram’s widow

Parsons’s most celebrated work, though, was that with The Flying Burrito Brothers – what the singer would call his Cosmic American Music. This band was formed with ex-Byrd Chris Hillman, with Sneaky Pete Kleinow (pedal steel), Chris Ethridge (bass) and Jon Corneal (drums). Their
Gilded Palace of Sin
(1969) was an album chock full of pain and beauty, Parsons’s finest moment perhaps the exquisite ‘Hot Burrito #1’. Its follow-up, however, was less well received, and the band were often criticized for their under-rehearsed shows. Parsons now began to wear ‘Nudie’ suits (the gaudy Hollywood-tailored apparel designed for some of the top artists), and to indulge his increasing penchant for drink and drugs – mainly imbibed in the sprawling outdoors he loved at Joshua Tree. The Burritos (who got their largest ever audience at the notorious Stones concert at Altamont) fell apart by 1971; Gram Parsons was fired from the band he had formed because of his increasing unreliability on and off stage.