The Everly Brothers are both gone now; Don passes at 84 - Entrepreneur Generations

Brothers Phil and Don Everly performed at the 10th annual Everly Brothers Homecoming concert in Central City, Kentucky, in 1997. They had a fraught relationship and broke up in 1973, but they later reunited. Phil, who was two years younger, died in 2014. (Photo by Suzanne Feliciano, Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, via The Associated Press)

Don Everly, who with his brother Phil influenced American popular music well beyond their time as a duo, and are in both the rock and country music halls of fame, died in Nashville Saturday. He was 84.

The brothers were from Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, made most famous by John Prine's "Paradise" and next door to Ohio County, the home of Bill Monroe. That's in the West Kentucky Coalfield, not the one to the east, but there are other similarities, and they all tapped into the culture of the rural upper South.

The brothers' "fusion of Appalachian harmonies and a tighter, cleaner version of big-beat rock ’n’ roll made them harbingers of both folk-rock and country-rock," Bill Friskics-Warren writes for The New York Times. Their first big single, “Bye Bye Love”, spent four weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and hit No. 1 on the country chart. "Many of their early recordings, including the No. 1 pop hits 'Bird Dog' and 'All I Have to Do Is Dream,' 'Bye Bye Love' was written by the husband-and-wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant and featured backing from Nashville’s finest session musicians."

The duo "rivaled Elvis Presley and Pat Boone for airplay, placing an average of one single in the pop Top 10 every four months from 1957 to 1961," the Times notes. Even as their career faded, "They influenced generations of hitmakers, from British Invasion bands like the Beatles and the Hollies to the folk-rock duo Simon and Garfunkel and the Southern California country-rock band the Eagles."

“Phil and Don were the most beautiful sounding duo I ever heard. Both voices pristine and soulful,” Paul Simon told the Times after Phil's death. “The Everlys were there at the crossroads of country and R&B. They witnessed and were part of the birth of rock 'n' roll.”

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/386gr7y The Everly Brothers are both gone now; Don passes at 84 - Entrepreneur Generations

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