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Country Matters
Well-heeled ’60s folkie and his chums boldly go where few had gone before.
By Jim Irvin.
Up periscope!: The International Submarine Band (Gram Parsons, far left, John Nuese, far right) in 1966.
Sundazed
DESPITE COUNTRY’S deep roots in rock’n’roll, the idea of forming a band specifically to play country music took a surprisingly long time to catch on. In 1965, The Beatles covering Buck Owens’ Act Naturally and The Byrds doing Porter Wagoner’s A Satisfied Mind demonstrated how it might work. At about that time, Ingram Parsons, the heir to a Florida citrus fortune, who was halfheartedly studying Theology at Harvard, while being more interested in folk music, had just disbanded his college band and met an avid country fan named John Nuese, former guitarist in Boston band The Trolls. They formed The International Submarine Band, basing themselves in a house in the Bronx, courtesy of Parsons’ trust fund, and cut an album (subsequently lost) and a couple of singles of mostly pop material for Goldstar in 1966, to no discernible interest.