Gram Parsons played Philly’s Bijou Cafe shortly before his death in 1973. 50 years later, the concert album is finally being released.

Gram Parsons’ talent burned brightly for a too-brief period of time.

In five short years, Parsons steered the Byrds toward twang on the landmark 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, codified the frisky country-rock sound with the Flying Burrito Brothers, introduced Emmylou Harris to the world on two solo albums, and impacted the Rolling Stones through his friendship with Keith Richards.

And then it was over. Parsons’ death from a mixture of tequila and morphine at age 26, on Sept. 19, 1973 — followed by his manager Phil Kaufman setting his body ablaze in what is now Joshua Tree National Park — is the stuff of rock and roll mythology.

Now, a long-lost live album recorded in Philadelphia just months before Parsons’ death, unheard for 50 years, is adding a new chapter to his legacy.

Back on March 16, 1973, steel guitar player Neil Flanz had the good sense to ask the sound man for a cassette tape at the end of a show at Philadelphia’s Bijou Cafe. A limited edition, double vinyl LP is now being released by Amoeba Records on Black Friday, as a Record Store Day exclusive. It’s credited to Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels and titled The Last Roundup, Live From the Bijou Cafe in Philadelphia, 3/16/73.

The tour was a formative experience for Emmylou Harris. “When I started working with Gram, I was just a hired hand,” she told The Inquirer in 2019, “on the tour and the album.”

“And then I started to realize the beauty and simplicity of country music. I became very serious about singing along with Gram … I think that’s where I really found my own voice.”

The show was the third of four at the Bijou, the 270-capacity club that operated from 1972 to 1982 as an intimate showcase for up-and-coming acts. Flanz thought it was by far the best show on the band’s tour to support GP, Parsons’ debut solo album in January that year.

It’s the most vital concert recording of Parsons with the Fallen Angels, a band featuring then-little known Harris, who twines her angelic voice with Parsons’. The album also includes an exquisite version of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant’s “Love Hurts,” which was included on Parsons’ posthumous Grievous Angel, released later that year.

”I’m a big Gram fan, and there’s not much Gram out there,” said Dave Prinz, speaking on the phone from San Francisco. Prinz, cofounder of the much-loved California mini-chain Amoeba Records, is one of the biggest reasons The Last Roundup exists, with blessings from both Harris and Parsons’ daughter, Polly Parsons.

“It’s a short career. He was like a supernova,” said Prinz. “He burned fast and hard, and was gone. So I wanted to find some more Gram that matters.”

Prinz put out a Flying Burrito Brothers album recorded in 1969 in San Francisco on Amoeba in 2007. The next year, a steel guitar-playing friend led him to Flanz.

“He had this tape for 35 years,” Prinz said. Flanz — who died in 2021 — burned it onto a CD for Prinz. He thought: “This is great ...He and Emmylou sing so amazingly on this show.”

Prinz paid Flanz for the rights, and told himself he would put it out someday. Then he put it aside for 13 years. During the pandemic, when Amoeba moved to a new location, Prinz found the CD in a box of Parsons’ things in storage. He listened to it again and realized “this is better than I remember it. It’s some of the best Gram there is.” Prinz, who saw Parsons perform several times in 1973, wasn’t at the Bijou.

The Bijou was in a historic Philadelphia space at 1409 Lombard St. that formerly housed Showboat, the jazz club where John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, and Aretha Franklin played, in the basement of the Douglass Hotel. It is where, as a blue historical marker now notes, “Billie Holiday often lived.”

Bob Marley, Billy Joel, Bette Midler, and Barry Manilow all performed there in the 1970s. U2 played its first Philadelphia shows there in 1980 and 1981. Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Billy Crystal, and David Letterman often opened.

“Tickets were $3.50; that’s what we normally charged,” said concert promoter Larry Magid, whose Electric Factory Concerts booked the room. Posters of Patti Smith and Kenn Kweder at the Bijou are included in “Electrified: 50 Years of Electric Factory,” the free exhibit currently on at Drexel University.

“We would do Wednesdays through Saturday,” Magid said. “We usually didn’t have shows on Sunday because there were blue laws in Philadelphia and you couldn’t serve alcohol.”

Magid also promoted a Parsons show at the Tower Theater in June 1973 billed as a Flying Burrito Brothers reunion. It was the last show Parsons would play before his death. Poor-quality audio recordings of the night can be heard on YouTube.

Polly Parsons was 6 when her father died, but she remembers him singing around the house and in the recording studio.

“I was blown away when I first heard it,” said Parsons, speaking about The Last Roundup via Zoom from Los Angeles.

The Last Roundup is from a Friday at the Bijou, in front of an appreciative-but-less-than-full house. The crowd is treated to a cover of Merle Haggard’s “California Cotton Fields” a beautiful performance of Parsons’ “New Soft Shoe,” and intriguing stage patter about Philadelphia heavyweight boxer Joe Frazier.

“It rings so incredibly true,” she said, citing the “tenderness and innocence and youth and vulnerability” in Harris’ voice, and also the way her father reveals himself in his performance.

“The thing that hit me was how clear and focused and excited he was,” she said.

“That performance at the Bijou Cafe is like a snapshot of time. I wish we spent more time talking about the essence of Gram Parsons and less about the lore surrounding him,” she said. “This is one of those sincere moments when we get a real thorough reminder of what we love about this man.”

A GoFundMe campaign raised money to support the album’s release, and Prinz hired audio engineer Gary Hobish, who died this month, to clean up the sound. “This year, I said: ‘I’m just gonna do it.’ I’m 70 now, and I just thought: I gotta get it out there. There’s certain things you need to do before you can’t,” Printz says.

The album will be on sale on vinyl only on Friday at Philadelphia area stores such as Repo Records on South Street, Siren Records in Doylestown and Main Street Music in Manayunk. If it sells out, Prinz says, additional copies will be available through amoeba.com. More details at recordstoreday.com.