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“Sin City” is a song written by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman and recorded by their band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, for their influential 1969 debut album, “The Gilded Palace of Sin.” By Hillman’s account, the two wrote it in about half an hour, building from a single opening line about a town filled with sin.
The lyric is a dark, almost apocalyptic look at late-1960s Los Angeles — a gilded, corrupt city, with glancing references to the music business and to the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and a warning that a reckoning may be coming. Its mournful close harmony drew openly on the Louvin Brothers and other country duos.
The song became a country-rock classic and crossed into bluegrass. The version heard here is by J.D. Crowe and the New South, the influential Kentucky band, from their 1979 album “My Home Ain’t in the Hall of Fame.”
