Gram Parsons, the influential country-rock musician, credited three legendary country singers with reigniting his passion for the genre after he had drifted away from it for roughly a decade. Speaking about his time in Boston, Parsons explained that surrounding himself with musicians who shared his outlook helped him rediscover a genre he had grown up with but had largely set aside while exploring folk and gospel influences at Harvard. This period marked a pivotal turning point in his career, giving him the identity and community that would later shape his pioneering fusion of country and rock music.

Parsons singled out George Jones, Ray Price and Merle Haggard as the artists who "reintroduced" him to country music, saying he had "forgotten about it for ten years" before that. He noted that although he already recognised them as great performers, he had to actively "learn to dig them", a process that taught him a great deal about the genre. His former student advisor at Harvard, Jet Thomas, later described Parsons during his earlier gospel-leaning phase as a "cultural outlaw doing country music" who treated it as a form of "white spiritual music".