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The Everly Brothers
Chained To A Memory 1966-1972
The third and last of Bear Family's Everly box sets, Chained to a Memory 1966-1972, chronicles the final act of the Everly Brothers' prime years, beginning just after the duo started to shake their mid-'60s doldrums and documenting their subsequent revival as they shifted to country-rock, the sound they continued to mine until their acrimonious split in 1973. This is a weighty set, containing a hefty hardcover book and a bonus DVD in addition to ten CDs, but the extra length isn't merely Bear Family's modus operandi -- it's needed to bring an end to a story this epic. Indeed, the music on Chained to a Memory is in some ways some of the most interesting the Everlys ever produced. As their star began to fade, the Everlys reconnected with their country beginnings, quite deliberately titling their 1968 makeover, Roots, finding a wealth of new sounds and sentiments within country-rock. They exhibited a keen ear for material from emerging songwriters, and they wrote some terrific new songs, songs that exhibited the widening chasm between the two brothers who shared a sound and continued to harmonize beautifully together even as their sensibilities began to drift apart. All this, of course, is evident on Chained to a Memory, a box that surprises in its variety and consistency, traits that are emphasized by the relative lack of long stretches of alternate takes, something that sometimes slowed its companion, The Price of Fame. Here, on recordings originally released on Warner and RCA, there are no foreign-market releases or holiday albums, no clusters of alternate takes -- the narrative keeps moving with a natural propulsion. The set kicks off with the sessions that resulted in the remarkable 1966 British Invasion salute Two Yanks in England, and after a little hippified stretching, cutting swinging remakes of "Blueberry Hill" and "Good Golly Miss Molly," the group settled into a country-rock groove, stretching it out until their 1973 break. Within that seemingly tight field, the Everlys found plenty of room to roam, giving Hank Snow's "I'm Moving On" a far-out groove that found an odd cousin in a reading of "A Whiter Shade of Pale," letting the brothers do everything from sweet, nostalgic takes of country standards to cutting convincing versions of songs by Kris Kristofferson, John Sebastian, Merle Haggard, Rod Stewart, Guy Clark, and John Prine. They also had considerable live chops, as evidenced by the complete concert captured on disc five, a bit of forceful rock & roll that finds the group opening up oldies to free-form jams that fit the time yet remained ever so slightly outside of it. That description fits the Everlys during these years: apart from 1967's "Bowling Green" they didn't have a single hit and didn't receive much attention outside of Roots, but the music here holds its own with any of the progressive country and country-rock of its time, and when taken with their groundbreaking Cadence recordings and the hits of their earliest Warner recordings, amounts to one of the great 20th century bodies of music. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi
8 CD & 1 DVD SET
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The Everly Brothers
It's Everly Time
While the Everlys' sound was diluted by more elaborate production in the '60s, that's not at all true on this LP, which is one of their very best. Not a stiff among the 12 tracks, most of which are barely known outside of serious Everly fans. Includes six stellar contributions by Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, one of Don Everly's best compositions ("So Sad"), and incredible harmony singing throughout. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music GuidePerformers: Don Everly - Guitar, Vocals; Phil Everly - Guitar, Vocals
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The Everly Brothers
A Date With The Everly Brothers
Although the material is not on the killer level of It's Everly Time, there are some very fine songs on their second Warner LP. Includes "Cathy's Clown," their raucous cover of Little Richard's "Lucille," "Love Hurts" (which preceded Roy Orbison's hit version), and "So How Come" (covered by the Beatles in 1963 on the BBC). ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music GuidePerformers: Don Everly - Guitar, Vocals; Phil Everly - Guitar, Vocals
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The Everly Brothers
Sing Great Country Hits
The Everly Brothers' homage to some of the best country songs of their era (and their authors and originators) seems like a no-brainer today, and ought to be regarded as a classic record, right up there with their own Roots, not to mention as beloved as anything by the Louvin Brothers or even, say, the Brown's Ferry Four in its sheer beauty and simplicity. Instead, partly thanks to the early Warner Bros. Records' inability to market their LP releases (or do much else right), and also some unfortunate timing in its release, it's ended up overlooked by most fans and listeners. Actually, swept aside would be more like it, along with most of the Everlys' other LP work, by the tidal wave of the British Invasion, which hit North American shores just two and a half months after the album's release. Phil and Don do right, and then some, by Hank Williams, Don Gibson, Hank Locklin, et al.; the singing is heavenly and the playing is spot-on perfect, and even if the public overlooked it, one might easily presume that Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, and a few other soon-to-be-important folk-rockers heard at least some of these renditions. They're still priceless, the singing is some of the most beautiful in the Everlys' output, and the arrangements are models of creative simplicity -- and for fans of the duo, it's almost as essential a record as Roots. [In 1997, the Collectors' Choice Music label reissued Sing Great Country Hits with seven additional bonus cuts.] ~ Bruce Eder, All Music GuidePerformers: Don Everly - Guitar, Vocals; Phil Everly - Guitar, Vocals
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The Everly Brothers
Gone Gone Gone
A jumble of tracks from varying sessions that, despite some excellent moments, were indicative of the general directionlessness of the Everlys' career at this point. The title song was their final Top 40 single of the '60s, and indeed one of their greatest performances. "The Ferris Wheel," also a 1964 single, was a decent, moody ballad that was a minor hit in both America and the U.K; for some reason, it was excluded from the double-CD compilation of their best '60s work, Walk Right Back. Otherwise, the album contains a few other songs cut in 1964, and some odds and ends from sessions in the early '60s. The Everlys, John D. Loudermilk, and the great Boudleaux/Felice Bryant songwriting team wrote almost all of the material on this album, but unfortunately it was not up to the standards of either the writers or the performers. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music GuidePerformers: Don Everly - Guitar, Vocals; Phil Everly - Guitar, Vocals
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The Everly Brothers
Rock 'N Soul
Rock n' Soul features a whole LP of oldies covers with guitar-heavy '60s arrangements, including such standards as "That'll Be the Day," "Kansas City," "Hound Dog," "Lonely Weekends," "I Got a Woman," and the then-recent "Dancin' in the Streets." It's decently played and sung, but not among the Everlys' most creative work, or even among their most interesting material of the mid-'60s. It's also not quite as good as the similar album they would release later in 1965, Beat & Soul. The version of "Love Hurts," incidentally, is a different, more rock-oriented version than the ballad arrangement they had recorded a few years previously. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music GuidePerformers: Don Everly - Guitar, Vocals; Phil Everly - Guitar, Vocals
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The Everly Brothers
Beat & Soul
For the second album in a row, the Everlys presented an entire LP of rock & roll covers (and one original), most of which had originally been hits in the 1950s -- "Love Is Strange," "Money," "Hi Heel Sneakers," "My Babe," "The Girl Can't Help It," "Lonely Avenue," and so on. While the performances are pretty good -- and the vocals perennially better than good -- it also seemed to be an indication that the pair were unwilling or unable to write or procure a decent supply of new material. Because of the overfamiliarity of most of the songs, it has to rate as one of the brothers' less interesting efforts, regardless of the high level of execution. Nevertheless, "Love Is Strange" almost made the Top Ten in the U.K., and the sole original, "Man With Money," was a quality effort that was covered by several British groups including, unexpectedly, the Who (though their version was not released until the 1990s). ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music GuidePerformers: James Burton - Guitar; Glen Campbell - Guitar; Sonny Curtis - Guitar; Don Everly - Guitar, Vocals; Phil Everly - Guitar, Vocals; Jim Gordon - Drums; Larry Knechtel - Guitar (Bass); Billy Preston - Piano; Leon Russell - Keyboards
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Roots
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The Everly Brothers
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