The Byrds Sweetheart of The Rodeo

Friday Music proudly presents for the first time on 180 Gram Translucent Blue & Green Swirl Audiophile Vinyl, the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Byrds’ "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo." Impeccably mastered by Joe Reagoso at Friday Music Studios & Capitol Mastering.

The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo was not the first important country-rock album (Gram Parsons managed that feat with the International Submarine Band's debut Safe at Home), and The Byrds were hardly strangers to country music, dipping their toes in the twangy stuff as early as their second album. But no major band had gone so deep into the sound and feeling of classic country (without parody or condescension) as The Byrds did on Sweetheart; at a time when most rock fans viewed country as a musical "L'il Abner" routine, The Byrds dared to declare that C&W could be hip, cool, and heartfelt. Though Gram Parsons had joined the band as a pianist and lead guitarist, his deep love of C&W soon took hold, and Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman followed his lead; significantly, the only two original songs on the album were both written by Parsons (the achingly beautiful "Hickory Wind" and "One Hundred Years from Now"), while on the rest of the set classic tunes by Merle Haggard, the Louvin Brothers, and Woody Guthrie were sandwiched between a pair of twanged-up Bob Dylan compositions. While many cite this as more of a Gram Parsons album than a Byrds set, given the strong country influence of McGuinn's and Hillman's later work, it's obvious Parsons didn't impose a style upon this band so much as he tapped into a sound that was already there, waiting to be released. If The Byrds didn't do country-rock first, they did it brilliantly, and few albums in the style are as beautiful and emotionally affecting as this.

Gram Parsons had a habit of taking over whatever band he happened to be working with, and on the first three albums on which he appeared he became the focal point, regardless of the talent of his compatriots. Burrito Deluxe, the Burritos' second album, is unique in Parsons' repertoire in that it's the only album where he seems to have deliberately stepped back to make more room for others; whether this was due to Gram's disinterest in a band he was soon to leave, or if he was simply in an unusually democratic frame of mind is a matter of debate. But while it is hardly a bad album, it's not nearly as striking as The Gilded Palace of Sin. And while the band sounds tight and they play with genuine enthusiasm, there's a certain lack of focus in these performances; the band's frontman sounds as if his thoughts are often elsewhere, and the other players can't quite compensate for him. Burrito Deluxe is certainly a better than average country-rock album, but coming from the band who made the genre's most strongly defining music, it's something of a disappointment.

It's very easy to underestimate the importance of Gram Parsons to American music. He never had anything close to a hit, and while he was pivotal in the creation of country-rock, and by rote, alternative country, none of his direct efforts at it (the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo, an album and a half with the Flying Burrito Brothers, his own two solo albums) stirred up any kind of mass public acceptance.

In 2018, Roger McGuinn and I teamed up with @martystuart and His Fabulous Superlatives for a 50th anniversary salute to Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Today, we announced the release of Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, With Marty Stuart And His Fabulous Superlatives Celebrate The 50th Anniversary Of Sweetheart Of The Rodeo set for Record Store Day 2024, April 20, as a limited edition 2 LP Translucent Gold Vinyl of 2,500 pressings, in a stunning gatefold cover. The album includes 24 tracks, selected from various stops on the 23-city, 27-show tour by Stuart’s audio engineer and the album’s producer, Mick Conley, and mastered for vinyl release by long time Byrds re-issue producer Joe Reagoso.

In 2018, Roger McGuinn and I teamed up with @martystuart and His Fabulous Superlatives for a 50th anniversary salute to Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Today, we announced the release of Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, With Marty Stuart And His Fabulous Superlatives Celebrate The 50th Anniversary Of Sweetheart Of The Rodeo set for Record Store Day 2024, April 20, as a limited edition 2 LP Translucent Gold Vinyl of 2,500 pressings, in a stunning gatefold cover. The album includes 24 tracks, selected from various stops on the 23-city, 27-show tour by Stuart’s audio engineer and the album’s producer, Mick Conley, and mastered for vinyl release by long time Byrds re-issue producer Joe Reagoso.

Brewer & Shipley are mostly known for their 1968 psychedelic folk-pop and country-rock album 'Down In L.A.', which sounds like a mixture of 'Sweetheart Of The Rodeo'-era Byrds and Curt Boettcher's Sagittarius and Millennium projects. This remastered disc contains radio broadcast recordings of the duo performing live and unplugged at the A&R Recordings Studios in NYC, 1971.