Some live albums and tracks aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Not that some are bad, but some aren’t all that live. Take for example the hugely successful Alive! by KISS. Four shows were recorded and found to be largely unusable. Other than Peter Criss’ drums, all vocals, guitars and bass were overdubbed with applause and cheers mixed in by engineer Eddie Kramer. Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” was a total studio production by Gus Dudgeon. The live disc of James Brown’s two-LP Sex Machine was all studio tracks with heavy reverb and crowd noise added in. Same goes for Ravi Shankar’s album Live at the Woodstock Festival, and Johnny Horton on Stage. Carlos Santana and Buddy Miles’s Live! was actually recorded in concert, but technical issues made the recordings unusable. So a two-minute live audience loop was edited in throughout the album.

The first track on side 2 of Gram Parsons’ Grievous Angel, released 51 years ago this year, features a “live” album track, “Medley Live from Northern Quebec.” It was actually a studio production, a combination of The Louvin Brothers’ “Cash on the Barrelhead” and “Hickory Wind.”

The album was originally to be titled Sleepless Nights, credited to Gram with Emmylou Harris, with a photo of the two of them on the cover. But Gram’s widow Gretchen didn’t much care for Emmy or the relationship Gram and she had. The album cover was changed to a portrait of Parsons, and the original title track was removed. The album peaked at #195 on the Billboard Top 200. In addition to “Hickory Wind,” included on the album are “$1,000 Wedding,” “Brass Buttons,” and the sublime “Love Hurts,” written by the legendary husband/wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant.

The original “Love Hurts” was recorded in 1960 by The Everly Brothers, with the first cover version being Roy Orbison’s B-side for his single “Running Scared” in 1961.

The song has had a remarkable life. Jim Capaldi scored a Top 5 hit in the UK with it in 1975. Nazareth had the biggest hit with it when they scored a heavy metal ballad hit in the US, Norway, and The Netherlands. My personal favorite version, that belongs to Keith Richards and Norah Jones, who teamed up for a performance at the Gram Parsons Tribute Concert in 2010:

The Bryant’s songwriting catalogue is staggering: “All I Have to Do is Dream,” “Take a Message to Mary,” “Bye Bye, Love,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” are only a very few of their classics. Felice and Boudleaux wrote nearly 6,000 songs, and have been inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame, The Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Among the very few to have recorded their songs: Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Elvis Costello, Tony Bennett, Joan Jett, Dean Martin, Grateful Dead, and Buddy Holly, Kitty Wells and Anita Carter.

Today’s Playlist is a way-too-brief SomethingIsHappening compendium of some of the Bryant’s greatest songs:

#LoveHurts #Nazareth #KISS #EltonJohn #GramParson #EmmylouHarris #JimCapaldi #RoyOrbison

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