Let's fire up a Saturday Evening Post centered around a milestone birthday for one of the cats that started the ball rolling on the music of the last 60 years.
For the case can surely be made that there's no band more formative that the duo he had with his brother in the second half of the 1950s.
All those British Invasion groups like the Stones and Beatles claim that when they started, they were only copying The Everly Brothers.
Of course no RnR history can be written without their dad Ike, himself one of the most influential guitar players in 20th Century American music.
When they came out with their unprecedented twists on the tunes of seminal songwriters Felice & Boudleaux Bryant, the world changed forever.
I guess you could say that Rock-n-Roll really started when the sex-as-rebellion songs raced up the charts; when Chuck Berry boogied on his finger, and when The Everlys were worried all the other kids would think them lecherous for having innocently fallen asleep at the movies with their sweetheart.
Their run of megahits as the Fifties transitioned to the Sixties permanently altered the way the music sounded, and expanded the themes it explored whilst retaining the frivolous and fun feel.
Neither ever had much of a solo career, but when you're part of a distinctive, family harmony group like The Everly Brothers, that becomes nearly impossible.
So to celebrate what would have been the 80th b'day of Phil Everly, we have this curious concert from their 1984 reunion tour that seems woefully undercirculated.
This bad boy seems dubbed from a monitor mix by a stealthy soundman, and captures a complete performance from the Harrah's resort out at the California/Nevada border back 35 years ago.
Everly Brothers
Harrah's
Lake Tahoe, NV
11.24.1984
01 The Price of Love
02 Walk Right Back
03 banter
04 Claudette
05 Crying In the Rain
06 Love Is Strange
07 When Will I Be Loved?
08 So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad)
09 Bird Dog
10 Bye Bye Love
11 (All I Have to Do Is) Dream
12 Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)
13 On the Wings of a Nightingale
14 Devoted to You/Ebony Eyes/Love Hurts
15 ('Til) I Kissed You
16 Wake Up Little Susie
17 Cathy's Clown
18 Lucille
19 Let It Be Me
20 Be Bop a-Lula
21 You Send Me
Total time: 1:16:02
Phil Everly - vocals and guitar
Don Everly - vocals and guitar
Pete Wingfield - keyboards
Phil Cranham - bass
Larry London - drums
Albert Lee - guitar
Philip Donnelly - guitar
master cassette of a stealth soundboard monitor mix, presumably dubbed by the night's soundman
462 MB FLAC/January 2019 archive link
This is a great tape and deserves to be available in lossless form somewhere, so I am hooking it up to the cloud so anyone that quests for it might be rewarded.
I'll be back in a few days with more January men and ladies and shows, because that's what I do.
Today, though, is the day to remember Phil Everly -- born this day in 1939 -- and where so much of the music of our age sparked off.--J.
1.19.1939 - 1.3.2014