Ebony Eyes – The Everly Brothers – On Flight 1203, his fiancee takes a plane but never quite makes it, the spoken word portion is so painful it chokes you back, especially as he watches the ebony eyes of ebony skies until there is nothing left to see but a plane never going to arrive – B+
The tenderness of the Everly Brothers, a song like the gentle river flowing “Devoted To You” or the birth of romantic love “Till I Kissed You”, the eternal love song “Let It Be Me” is from a foreign country. Our music isn’t this gentle any more, melodies don’t dig so deep. It’s foreign to us.
Walk Right Back – The Everly Brothers – Love them close harmonies, you can hear what Lennon and McCartney were listening to, and the background lick is very good -it moves right along, the lyric is sticky but the chorus, really the last four lines of the verse, is elastoplast.
Wow, this has aged well… actually this has improved, The Steve Stills sample is superb and PE’s target, the corrupt and corrupting world of basketball (Biggie connected it to selling crack some 20 years ago) is a dangerous target… great movie as well – A
Bridge Over Troubled Water – Aretha Franklin – I saw Franklin perform this the day after Whitney Houston died, February 17th, 2012 at Radio City Music Hall and it was superior to this take but not by much. Both are Gospel, but the pain that night is something only real grieving can match – A
All their Cadence material is a must but more than that, so many songs: “Cathy’s Clown”, “Till I Kissed You”, “Wake Up Little Suzy”… on and on, they are the lexicon of rock love songs.
let’s say, you are one of the lucky ones, well, it doesn’t matter because if you have nothing to be sad about, devastated about, your brain won’t let you rest. You’ll make one up. Yes, and if it gets really really bad and it can, it will, it does, it can leave you an emotional and physical wreck, insane with grief, you can die, you can be alone, you can kill yourself. Life doesn’t care.
I have heard good things about their reworkings of the Everly Brothers songs on the epic Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. Me? I don’t see how on earth the Joe and Jones album can’t suck. So I gave it to 1D
Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet – The Everly Brothers – From Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, this is a strange and beautiful close harmony duet about romantic fealty – A
Reflecting the diversity of the era, there are entries by Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Muddy Waters, and Hank Williams. Elvis Presley deservedly owned the era commercially and artistically, but one Charles Edward Anderson Berry could play a guitar just like a ringing the bell.
