Jim James was 21 years old and shopping at Ear X-tacy, the legendary Louisville record store, when he first discovered the George Harrison album that would change his life. He was talking to a friend who worked there, Jeremy Podgursky, the singer and guitarist in a band called the Pennies, which was at the time playing a lot of shows with James’s then-new rock band, My Morning Jacket. And so when James told Podgursky how much he loved the song “Long Long Long,” a Harrison-written song from The White Album, Podgursky responded, “Well then you must love All Things Must Pass,” James didn’t yet know the 1970 rock masterpiece, Harrison’s first solo album after the Beatles broke up—but he bought it that day. “There are so many records you’ve found that you really don’t remember the exact moment you found it,” James recalls now. “But this one—I remember the day, I remember what my bedroom looked like, I remember the person who told me about it. I remember so clearly everything about it.”
