Don Everly, the other half of the duo known as the Everly Brothers, has died at the age of 84. His brother Phil died in 2014 of pulmonary disease at the age of 74. What was surprising was that Phil had been a heavy smoker all his life. You would think that someone whose voice was in the higher registers and was his gift to the world would take better care of it.
The music of the Everly brothers played a huge role in my life and I still listen to them in my car on long drives. The beautiful harmonies and guitar playing resulted in highly memorable songs.
Here are two of my favorites.
The first is Walk Right Back which has a famous sequence of chords that begins the song and is repeated throughout. It was my ambition to master that sequence so that I could play that song. I failed.
And here’s Cathy’s Clown performed live. This song spoke to all the young men of my generation who acted like fools because of the spell the one they loved cast on them.
Freddie Mercury also couldn’t manage to quit, even though he refused surgery to fix his throat nodules in case the surgery altered his voice. Addiction is difficult.
Good music doesn’t have a “sell by date”. Centuries old classical and baroque pieces are proof of that, as is anything from any decade.
It galls me that people call 1980s music “oldies” now. 1950s were 20 years ago when I was a tween, but I still heard songs on the radio from time to time. Now it’s hard even finding compilations of the Everly Brothers, Ricky Nelson or the like.
As I noted on my own post, Tom T. Hall died on Friday. Country music probably didn’t travel well, but he wrote many hits and several books.
“Good music doesn’t have a “sell by date”.”
Agreed. That’s why future generations will remember Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard instead from that period instead of the then popular saccharine stuff.
Ricky Nelson though will always be remembered thanks to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZu6S3qjJy8
(from 1:00 on for the impatient).
Fortunately George Gershwin doesn’t need Nelson as Ella Fitzgerald will do: