The 'rock-and-roll president' may surprise you

Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and Gregg Allman, Feb. 2, 1976.
(Photo by Jerome McClendon, Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

Which president loved rock and roll the most? Bill Clinton? Barack Obama? Some say it was Jimmy Carter.

"Before Bill Clinton wailed on a saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show or Barack Obama invited Stevie Wonder and Prince for a private show at the White House, Jimmy Carter stood in a field, hands on his hips, clad in a T-shirt promoting the Allman Brothers Band's Win, Lose or Draw album," recalls Melissa Ruggieri for Oxford American. "It was July 1976, and Carter, feathered hair blowing in the wind, was gunning for the presidency. But there he was supporting a quintessential Southern rock band, one of his favorites, in front of the traveling national press corps."

Carter was an original diehard fan. Ruggieri writes, "Prior to a 1975 Allman Brothers benefit concert for Carter's campaign, the presidential hopeful introduced the band to a crowd in Rhode Island by remarking, 'Anybody who wants a president who doesn't like music like this, and who doesn't like people who make music like this, should just simply vote for another man,'" Ruggieri writes. "So much about this peanut farmer from teeny Plains, Georgia, was an anomaly from the start: Georgia had never produced a successful presidential candidate, and the humble Carter had never held a national office, making him a mystery to much of the country. . . . Publicly embracing the sweet and sour songs of a group of long-haired Southern firebrands wasn't a typical move for a politician.

"Maybe it wasn't apparent at the time, but Carter was positioning himself as the rock-and-roll president, the one history will remember as not only a connoisseur of the rock music of his home state, but also as a student of Bob Dylan's lyrics, a devotee of Willie Nelson's warble, an admirer of Aretha Franklin's searing soul, and a scholar of Dizzy Gillespie's mesmerizing bebop," Ruggieri writes. "While the Allmans and Carter shared an everlasting mutual affection, the band wasn't the only Southern mainstay to play at the White House. In 1978, the Atlanta Rhythm Section, the soft-rock toe-tappers 'Imaginary Lover' and 'So Into You,' performed at a cookout on the South Lawn. Johnny Cash and his family visited frequently."

"Carter's affiliation with musicians was never about a photo opportunity or a cynical underground ploy to court voters. . . . His allegiance was born out of devotion to the art," Ruggieri writes. "Carter, the Allmans, and others were small-town Southern men bringing their messages to the national stage. America took notice. . . . At the end of the Rock & Roll President documentary, Carter sits pensively in his home in Plains, circa 2018, while Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Simple Man' plays in the background. It's a fitting coda. . . . 'Music,' he says, 'is the best proof that people have one thing in common.'"

J. R. 'Robbie' Robertson, who 'turned old American folklore into modern myths' with The Band and others, dies at 80

Robertson at his Santa Monica studio in 2019. (Photo by Carolyn Cole, L.A. Times)

Robbie Robertson, a native Canadian who helped create the muscal genre Americana or "roots music," did Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 80.

James Royal Robertson was lead songwriter and guitarist of The Band, which started out as The Hawks, often a backup group for rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan, and "ended up as The Band — a conceit their fans would say they earned — because people would point to them when they were with Dylan and refer to them as 'the band'," writes Hillel Italie of The Associated Press. "The Band profoundly influenced popular music in the 1960s and ‘70s, first by literally amplifying Dylan’s polarizing transition from folk artist to rock star and then by absorbing the works of Dylan and Dylan’s influences as they fashioned a new sound immersed in the American past. . . . They remain defined by their first two albums, 'Music from Big Pink' and 'The Band,' both released in the late 1960s." Robertson's works "offered a rustic vision of America that seemed at once mythic and authentic," writes Jim Farber of The New York Times.

Robertson "had the knack of making everything he recorded sound fashioned by hand, produced in a barn and played from the heart," Ty Burr writes for The Washington Post. "But his influences and inspirations came from all over the map: the lost colony of Acadia and Louisiana’s Cajun diaspora, deep-blues juke joints in the Mississippi Delta and rockabilly rave-ups at a Midwest county fair. There was jazz in there, and folk music and country; there was a lot of backwoods front-porch hootenanny. There were the atmospheric orchestrations of modern film scoring, too, and underneath it all and increasingly on the surface there was Robertson’s birthright: the sounds of Ontario’s Six Nations people and, by extension, the indigenous tribes of an entire continent — the roots music whose roots go deepest of all. Robbie Robertson didn’t make Americana. He made North American music."

The Band's songs, sung by drummer Levon Helm, keyboardist Richard Manuel and bassist Rick Danko, "were unlike anything on the AM or FM dial — older, wiser, sadder and friskier, with bones that went back to a time before electricity," Burr writes. "Parables like 'The Weight,' which straddled the Bible and the tall tale; 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,' which sounded like it really was sung by a defeated Confederate soldier in 1865; ''King Harvest Has Surely Come', a busted Depression-era farmer’s lament; 'Up On Cripple Creek,' a truck driver coming home to Bessie in 'Lake Charles, Looozeyana'. . . . Like Dylan, Robertson was a self-taught musicologist and storyteller influenced by everything American from the novels of William Faulkner to the scorching blues of Howlin’ Wolf to the gospel harmonies of the Swan Silvertones." Farber says Robertson's lyrics "conjured a wild place, often centered in the South, peopled by rough-hewed characters," such as "the shady creatures in 'Life Is a Carnival'."

In death, Robertson has a final hit: His 2017 memoir Testimony "has returned to the top of the bestseller lists," Variety reports. Here are "15 essential Robbie Robertson songs," from the Los Angeles Times, whose Stephen Thomas Erlewine says "Robertson turned old American folklore into modern myths" and "acted as the ringleader in 'The Last Waltz,' widely regarded as one of the greatest concert films ever made." Erlewine reports on Robertson's later work and notes, "In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to the Six Nations of the Grand River to support a new Woodland Cultural Center."

Singer Tina Turner, native of tiny Nutbush, Tenn., dies at 83

Turner poses for a portrait in 1985. (Photo by 

Denize Alain, Sygma, Getty Images via CNN)

Tina Turner was born into poverty in rural West Tennessee. She first achieved musical success with her abusive husband Ike Turner, and later became a mid-life, single-act musical icon who earned the title "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll." She died Wednesday at age 83.

Born Anna Mae Bullock in the crossroads hamlet of Nutbush, Tenn., she met St. Louis band leader Ike Turner and married him in 1962. Turner was the lead singer in the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, and the band released bold R&B tunes like "Nutbush City Limits" and famous covers like Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary." The couple achieved notable success opening for the Rolling Stones U.S. tour in 1969 and gaining a "certified gold" album in 1974 for "What You Hear Is What You Get." Still, the relationship soured as Ike became heavily addicted to cocaine. Tina divorced Ike in 1978.

Turner in 1970 (Wikipedia photo)

If the first half of Turner's performance career was dynamic, the second half, which began in the early 1980s, was a dynamite explosion of talent and musical energy that surprised the industry and rocketed Turner to her iconic status. In 1984, she crooned, churned and blasted audiences with her album Private Dancer, which sold over 10 million, won three Grammy awards. The album included her only number one hit, "What's Love Got to Do With It," a song that personified much of the Turner's saga of struggle and triumph.

Turner became a global star also known for her acting role alongside Mel Gibson in "Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome." In 2018, she received the Grammy Life Achievement Award. As Turner aged, she kept creating music, writing a musical, several books and collaborating with international artists. In October 2021, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She spent her last years in Zurich, Switzerland.

Here is The New York Times' list of Turner's "11 essential songs." From across the Atlantic, The Economist sees one state: "There are very few living American singers whose work springs from a distant, lost past. Dolly Parton, a titan of country music, was born in a one-room cabin by Little Pigeon River in Tennessee. Tina Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock, grew up in Nutbush, Tennessee, where her father oversaw sharecroppers; she had childhood memories of working in the cotton fields. Before she died on May 24, she was a link to the forces that shaped the blues and country and rock’n’roll." Here's Nutbush on a Google map:

Willie's 90th birthday bash covers a century of American music, whose course he changed by moving back to Texas

Willie Nelson greeted Keith Richards at the Hollywood Bowl Sunday.
(Photo by Randall Michelson of EB Media, via Los Angeles Times)

"It’s not much of an exaggeration — and yet it defies logic — to say that you could trace the history of American music’s last 100 years during the two nights of “Willie Nelson 90: Long Story Short” at the Hollywood Bowl over the weekend. Jazz, country, gospel, blues, rock, Nashville pop, Americana, even hip-hop (well, he smokes with Snoop) are all seamlessly part of Nelson’s DNA, and all were represented over the dozens of tributes paid to him as he turned 90," Mikael Wood and Erin Osmon report for the Los Angeles Times.

More than 45 artists took the stage to honor Nelson; Osmon and Wood chose 10 outstanding moments, including Roseanne Cash and 86-year-old Kris Kristofferson, who sang “Lovin’ Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again).” Sturgill Simpson "said the only reason he went to Nashville to make country records was 'because I grew up listening to country records by Willie Nelson' — records, he added, that exist 'outside of the box of what most people think country records can be.'" Other standoiuts: Beck, Chris Stapleton, George Strait, Allison Russell and Norah Jones, Lukas Nelson, Emmylou Harris and Daniel Lanois, Sheryl Crow and Keith Richards, who joined Willie for "a beautifully crusty version of Waylon Jennings’ 'We Had It All,' which sounded about a million years old, and Billy Joe Shaver’s very aptly titled 'Live Forever.'"

In advance of the concert, Michael Granberry of the Dallas Morning News did an overview of Nelson's career, which began in rural Texas, went to Nashville for songwriting, and returned to his home state: "Willie did more than change the course of American music with his risk-taking move from Nashville to Austin. Nearly half a century after the release of "Red Headed Stranger," his legacy extends to performances in the White House. To his fans and friends, Willie is a timeless icon. He shows not a shred of shame as the country’s most alluring pot smoker. And he somehow manages to rise above political and cultural divides, appealing to young and old, rich and poor, even to the most outspoken on the left and right." Joe Nick Patoski, who wrote the 2008 biography Willie Nelson: An Epic Life, told Granberry that Nelson is “the single most important Texan of the 20th and the 21st century, because he not only reflects — he defines Texas culture. No single person epitomizes the qualities that make Texans different from other people and separates Texas from the rest of the world, not just the United States.”

Jerry Lee Lewis, an energetic founder of rock 'n' roll, is dead

Jerry Lee Lewis, known as "The Killer," at the 2015 Jazz Fest in New Orleans. (Photo by Matthew Hinton, NOLA.com)

Jerry Lee Lewis, the last of the rural-raised founders of rock 'n' roll, died Friday at his home in Mississippi just south of Memphis. He was 87.

Wikipedia base map

Born in Ferriday, La., Lewis and "two of his cousins, the future evangelist Jimmy Swaggart and the future country singer Mickey Gilley (who died this year), liked to sneak into a local dance hall, Haney’s Big House, to hear top blues acts perform," writes William Grimes of The New York Times. "He showed an aptitude for the piano, and his father borrowed money to buy him one."

“The more he practiced, the surer the left hand and wilder the right hand became,” Nick Tosches wrote in Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story, one of two 1982 biographies. The other was Myra Lewis’s Great Balls of Fire: The Uncensored Story of Jerry Lee Lewis, noting both his signature song and the personal scandal and tribulations that diminished his career.

But in 1986, Lewis was in the first class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he was inducted this month to the Country Music Hall of Fame, reflecting the genre in which he found more lasting success. Last year, he and Swaggart did a gospel album, The Boys from Ferriday. But at the start, his "pounding boogie-woogie piano and bluesy, country-influenced vocals helped define the sound of rock ’n’ roll," Grimes writes.

"Tender ballads were best left to the old folks," writes Hillel Itale of The Associated Press. "Lewis was all about lust and gratification, with his leering tenor and demanding asides, violent tempos and brash glissandi, cocky sneer and crazy blond hair. He was a one-man stampede who made the fans scream and the keyboards swear, his live act so combustible that during a 1957 performance of 'Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On' on 'The Steve Allen Show,' chairs were thrown at him like buckets of water on an inferno."

Bluegrass legend Dean Webb, influence on many, dies at 81

Dean Webb, on "The Andy Griffith Show," left, and playing his mandolin.

Bluegrass mandolin legend Dean Webb died on June 30 at the age of 81. He first began playing bluegrass and country music in honky-tonk bars across the rural Midwest, but in the early 1960s began playing with The Dillards. After the group got a recording contract in 1962, they released several albums and began to gain some notoriety. But their big break came from their appearances on The Andy Griffith Show, in which they played bluegrass as members of the fictitious Darling family. Besides that, "The Dillards have had television exposure on Nashville Now, The Johnny Cash Show, Hollywood a Go-Go and Hootenanny, among other programmes," Richard Thompson reports for Bluegrass Today. They also opened for Elton John on his first tour of the U.S. in 1972.

The Dillards' musical influence ranges far beyond what one might expect: Webb's mandolin playing helped influence Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones to pick up the instrument, and his harmony arranging skills helped The Byrds figure out the complicated harmonies on "Mr. Tambourine Man," Thompson reports.

"What an enormous influence he had on musicians out here," longtime bluegrass DJ Wayne Rice told Thompson. "I don’t think I ever heard anyone play the mandolin quite like he did. He held it like a machine gun and just blew us all away."

Ronnie Ellis, Kentucky statehouse correspondent for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., remembers Webb on a more personal level. He writes in the Richmond Register that Webb was his best friend and an uncommonly loving, patient and methodical man. "Dean loved deeply those he loved at all. He loved as well to share his friends, impatient to introduce one to another. Because he was that way, I met an extraordinary number of exceptionally interesting people, a couple of whom also became life-long friends," Ellis writes. "I've often told my children I am the richest person I know. Not for what I possess but because of the people I'd been given to love and enjoy. Dean enriched my life more than I can describe. His was one long adventure and he kindly took me along for the ride."

Leon Russell, who played classical, rock, country, blues, soul, gospel, jazz and more, dies at 74

UPDATE, March 19, 2023: A biography tells us a lot but not enough about this secretuve musical icon.

Leon Russell, a musical genre-blender who played sessions and then did concerts and records with musical greats and earned a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, died at his home in Nashville Saturday. He was 74.

"With a top hat on his head, hair well past his shoulders, a long beard, an Oklahoma drawl in his voice and his fingers splashing two-fisted barrelhouse piano chords, Mr. Russell cut a flamboyant figure in the early 1970s," Jon Pareles writes for The New York Times. He did "Wall of Sound" sessions with producer Phil Spector, started Shelter Records, led Joe Cocker's band, played at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh and concerts with Jerry Lee Lewis and the Rolling Stones, had hit records with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and by himself, wrote hits for others, played country music as Hank Wilson, did bluegrass with the New Grass Revival, explored jazz and blues, faded into obscurity and then resurfaced in a late-life collaboration with Elton John. The Tennessean of Nashville has a photo gallery of his career.

Russell was classically trained but a birth injury limited his timing and range of motion on keyboards. He told the Los Angeles Times in 1999, "I invented ways to play in a classical style that was not the real deal." Born Claude Russell Bridges in Lawton, Okla., in 1941, he adopted his stage name from a Los Angeles friend who loaned him an ID so he could play clubs when he was under 21. He had "a rich, hearty voice that drifted between country and soul," and his "Union" album with Elton John is "an elegant work that showcases each artist's prowess with the piano and Russell's flair for bridging pop and gospel," writes the LAT's Todd Martens. John called Russell "one of the greatest American treasures."

Russell told the LAT he was hard for radio program directors to figure out because "I was not a brand that they could always expect was going to be the same thing. I'm not as aware of categories in music as some people are. To me it's just music. I'm interested in all kinds of music." In 1978, he issued an album called "Americana" which helped define yet another genre that seemed to fit him best.

'Americana' music gains popularity and recognition

Bob Weir performing

"Americana" music is on the rise, with four of its artists—Bon Iver, Bob Weir (formerly of the Grateful Dead), Van Morrison and the Drive-By Truckers—in the most recent Billboard charts top 10 for the week ending Oct. 6, Dan Rys reports for the magazine. Americana has more spots in the top 10 than any other music except rock, a genre for which all four artists also qualify.

The four's popularity reflects a recent trend toward the establishment of Americana music as a distinct genre in a realm often dominated by rock, country, rap and R&B, Rys writes. In 2010 the Grammy Awards added a Best Americana album category—Levon Helm won it that year—and there are now categories for Best American Roots Song and Best American Roots Performance.

In August of 2015, Merriam-Webster officially added "Americana" to its dictionary, "defining it as 'a genre of American music having roots in early folk and country music.'" Rys writes. "And in May, Billboard announced the re-branding of the Folk Albums chart following in-depth dialogue with industry contacts, writing the chart would 'spotlight the middle ground bridging country and rock: organic, roots and acoustic-based groups and solo singer-songwriters.'"

Jed Hilly, executive director of the Americana Music Association, told Rys, "I think it's burgeoning in the commercial marketplace for a community that already existed in a non-commercial marketplace. I think that the fact that there's a word in the dictionary, there's a Grammy Award, [now] there's a place for these artists who don't necessarily fit in the mainstream commercial boxes, but do have artistic similarities can call home." (Read more)

How often is your state named in popular songs?

Does your state inspire musicians to write songs? Julia Silge, who writes a blog, data science ish, used figures from the Billboard Hot 100 from 1958 to the present to chart two maps, one that shows how many times a state was mentioned in song lyrics and one that divided mentions by population to find which states got more or less than their share of attention, Ana Swanson reports for The Washington Post. (Pictogram: Number of mentions by state)

"Southern states like Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky turned out to have an outsized influence, as did states like New York, Hawaii and Montana," Swanson writes. "Nebraska and Maine also fared well." (Number of mentions by state per every million residents)

Silge found that New York had the most mentions, 51, although she estimates that many of those references probably refer to the city, not the state. Second was California, with 26 mentions, followed by Georgia (21), Texas (13), Tennessee (11), Alabama (9), Mississippi (8), Kentucky (7) and Hawaii and Virginia (6).

When accounting for mentions per every million people, Hawaii was No. 1, followed by Mississippi, New York, Maine, Georgia, Montana, Alabama, Tennessee, Nebraska and Kentucky.

Eagles frontman Don Henley revisits rural east Texas roots as inspiration for new solo album

Don Henley, original member of the Eagles, has returned to his rural roots to find inspiration for his first solo album in 15 years, Anthony Mason reports for CBS News. The album, "Cass County," is named after the east Texas county where Henley grew up in the 1950s and 60s. (Wikipedia map: Cass County, Texas)

Henley told Mason, "After singing the Eagles material, some of which we've been singing for over 40 years now, I really need some other songs to sing. Even some of my solo stuff is three decades old now. So I want new songs to sing." Henley said he wanted to write the kind of songs he grew up listening to with his parents, an auto parts dealer and a teacher. He said he found those new songs through his childhood home, of which he says, "You can't really describe it. You have to bring them here. I just tell them, 'It's a magical place, and you've never seen anything like.'"

For Henley, "resuming his own successful solo career has meant returning to Cass County—where he started a foundation to preserve Caddo Lake—and to Linden," reports Mason. "Henley, who lives several hours away in Dallas with his wife and three children, has bought the land the old movie theatre used to stand on. He also owns the barber shop and several other buildings."

"He bought those buildings to help his hometown, but the farmland, Henley says, he bought for himself and his family," Mason reports. Henley told him, "This is gonna be my retirement place, I think. My big dream that I hope to accomplish in the next few years is to have a cornfield like my father had. That was my field of dreams when I was growing up. You could lie on your back and look up through the tassels at the sky. I don't think I've ever had a sense of well-being to equal that." (Read more) (YouTube video)

USA Today lists best festivals in the U.S.; many promote tourism in rural areas

Now that the weather is heating up throughout most of the U.S., festival season is on the horizon. USA Today "teamed up with a panel of festival experts to find the best music, food, culture, art and film festivals in the U.S," Lydia Schrandt reports for USA Today. Readers were then allowed to vote for their favorites, and some of the winners include festivals in rural areas or with rural resonance.

Among the best music festivals, No. 2 was the Electric Forest Festival, a four-day music fest in Rothbury, Mich., a village with a population of 424. An estimated 50,000 people attend the festival every year. No. 7 on the list is Bonnaroo, a four-day festival held on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tenn. The festival had more than 90,000 attendees last year.

For poetry enthusiasts, the Best Cultural Festival list includes the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev. The six-day event is "an annual celebration of the ranching and rural West," says the organization's website. Also on the list are the Texas Renaissance Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Frozen Dead Guy Days, Cheyenne Frontier Days, Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and Festivals Acadiens et Créoles.

No. 2 on the list of Best General Food Festival is the Bounty of Yamhill County, located in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. The Bounty of Yamhill County "is a three-day annual event that celebrates this vibrant community of famous wineries, celebrated chefs and sustainable family farms. No other locally sourced food and wine event can boast such nationally recognized participants," says the organization's website. No. 9 on the list is the Beaver Creek Food & Wine Weekend, a four-day event in Beaver Creek, Colo.

For a complete list of best festivals, click here.

Internet radio station gives worldwide exposure to aspiring musicians of Appalachia

Appalachian musicians are getting worldwide exposure through an Internet radio station based in West Virginia that mostly plays local bands from the Charleston area but hopes to expand to cover musicians in the entire region, Bill Lynch reports for The Charleston Gazette. The station, New Appalachian Radio, which began airing in March, was created by two former college classmates.

Station co-founder Jody Herndon told Lynch, "New Appalachian music can sound like a lot of things. It can be country or rock or rap or even metal. It’s just all influenced by being here." (Gazette photo by Kenny Kemp: Station founders Eric Meadows and Jody Herndon)

Herndon and co-founder Eric Meadows said that "What they hope to do is to give local people the chance to hear their favorite local bands someplace other than the clubs as well as spread that music farther out," Lynch writes. They said they also hope the station becomes popular enough to influence Appalachian musicians to remain locally instead of taking their musical talents to urban areas like New York or Nashville. (Read more) Listen to the station by clicking here.

Phil Everly, influential harmonist and songwriter of early rock, and country too, dies at 74

Phil Everly (1999 L.A. Times photo)

Phil Everly, who with his brother Don made harmonies that influenced a generation of rock, country and folk musicians, died today in Burbank, Calif., of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his wife Patti told the Los Angeles Times. A lifetime smoker, he was 74.

The Everly Brothers "charted nearly three dozen hits on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart [and] were among the first 10 performers inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when it got off the ground in 1986," Randy Lewis writes for the Times.

They are also in the Country Music Hall of Fame, note Greg Botelho and Todd Leopold of CNN. "Their style -- a product of their blend of rock 'n' roll with Appalachian folk, bluegrass and other genres more closely aligned to their Kentucky roots -- helped them earn inductions in both."

Phil, by two years the younger brother of Don Everly, was born in Chicago, but his roots were in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, where their father, Ike Everly, was a contemporary of fellow singer-guitarist Merle Travis and Mose Rager, who taught Travis the thumb-picking style popular in the West Kentucky Coal Field. The boys sang with their father and mother, Margaret Embry Everly, on a radio show in Shenandoah, Iowa, in the 1940s, and later moved to Indiana, Knoxville and Nashville.

Ike Everly's regular trade was barbering, and one of his customers was Boudleaux Bryant, who had moved to Nashville with his wife Felice to pursue their joint songwriting career. When the brothers signed with Cadence Records in 1957, with the help of Chet Atkins, the Bryants offered them three duet songs: "Bye, Bye, Love," "Wake Up Little Susie," and "All I Have to Do Is Dream." The rest is history.

The Everly Brothers on TV in 1972
(Tony Russell Redferns, Getty Images)

The brothers' singing and songwriting careers faded in the 1960s and they split up when Phil smashed his guitar and walked off stage in 1973 after Don showed up drunk. They reunited a decade later with a concert at London's Royal Albert Hall after Phil's solo album, Phil Everly, had done well in the United Kingdom. They did a reunion concert for HBO. They continued solo work, and Phil often collaborated with other musicians. The brothers sang backup on Linda Ronstadt's 1974-75 version of "When Will I be Loved," written by Phil for the brothers in 1960.

"They had that sibling sound," Ronstadt told the Times. "The information of your DNA is carried in your voice, and you can get a sound [with family] that you never get with someone who’s not blood related to you. And they were both such good singers -- they were one of the foundations, one of the cornerstones of the new rock 'n' roll sound." (Read more)

"The roots of the Everly Brothers are very, very deep in the soil of American culture," Paul Simon wrote for Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Artists of All Time," on which they were No. 33. "The Everly Brothers' impact exceeds even their fame. They were a big influence on John Lennon and Paul McCartney — who called themselves the Foreverly Brothers early on — and, of course, on Simon and Garfunkel." Rolling Stone called them "the most important vocal duo in rock."

Tennessee songwriting festival renews this week

Stunned that there wasn't already an Appalachian songwriters festival in East Tennessee, musician Cyndy Montgomery Reeves helped start one, Kenneth Burns reports for The Mountain Press, the daily newspaper for Sevierville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Now in its second year, the Smoky Mountains Songwriting Festival is scheduled to begin Thursday and run through Sunday in Gatlinburg. (Photo from festival website: Musicians performing at last year's event)

The event showcases amateur and professional musicians and features competitions in bluegrass, country, folk and rock, Burns writes. All live music is free. There are also workshops, which charge a fee, and cover areas such as how to write, pitch and demo a song, increasing your chances of getting a song cut, and co-writing.

Reeves was inspired to start the event after seeing a similar festival in Key West, Fla., Burns writes. She told Burns, "I love you, Jimmy Buffett, but how can you have a songwriters festival for 16 years, and I’m from East Tennessee, and I’ve never heard of one?” From there, Reeves helped preview the festival for city officials in 2011, before the first event was held last year. She told Burns, "It was very successful,. Everybody there enjoyed it. We broke even, and we started something we knew could be a great success.” (Photo by Kay Speer: Festival founder Cyndy Reeves)

One performer will be Marty Dodson, who has written songs recorded by Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, Billy Currington, and Diamond Rio. Dodson told Burns, "It’s about putting a face behind the song. When people hear a song I wrote that Kenny Chesney did, they might feel like maybe he wrote it, or they don’t think about who wrote the song.” Dodson said songwriter festivals also can educate listeners about the nature of the music business. He told Burns, “If I’m downloading a song for free, here’s who I’m hurting, a real person with a family.” (Read more)

Farm Aid concert shines spotlight on family farms

A variety of motivations brought around 35,000 people to Farm Aid 25 in Milwaukee last week, but all the crowd "seemed to leave with a sense of pride in their country and an overflowing love and for the traditional family farmer," University of Kentucky student Alexandria Sardam reports. The concert, started in 1985 by Willie Nelson, featured Neil Young (photo by Sardam), Kenny Chesney, Norah Jones and many other artists, and attracted farm families and supporters from all over the nation.

"I think that it’s so important that we reach an understanding as a society that if we want a healthy future and healthy planet and healthy children then we have to think globally but act locally," said musician Dave Matthews, who has been a Farm Aid board member and performer since 2001. Matthews owns Maple Hill Farm, an organic farm that is a contributor to the Best of What’s Around Community Supported Agriculture Program located near Charlottesville, Va. Young left the crowd with a strategy for helping U.S. farmers: "Look at the label," he said. "Don't buy from other countries. Buy American." (Read more)

"Combining music and activism, Farm Aid has carved out an interesting history," Karen Herzog and Bill Glauber of the Milwaulkee Journal Sentinel report. "It began as a musical plea to save the family farm in America and morphed into a platform for the good-food movement and sustainable agriculture, starring family farms." Carolyn Mugar, Farm Aid's executive director, explained the event is based on a simple truth: "Supporting family farmers and family farm-centered food systems can jump-start a fragile economy, improve public health and create a cleaner environment for future generations," the reporters write. (Read more)

Tim McGraw's 'Southern Voice' is a song, a theme, a message and a lesson that all need hearing

"It’s a cliché among liberals to look at the rural American South with snobbery and scorn," David Masciotra writes for the Daily Yonder, and he gives examples, before touting Democrat and social critic Tim McGraw’s new single, “Southern Voice,” from his album of the same name, as "required listening for country music fans — and for liberals who amuse themselves, and no one else, by pretending that the American South is simply a pit of toothless, rump-scratching, drunken low-lives whose favorite hobbies are burning crosses, incest, and dropping out of school."

Masciotra calls the song "a desperately needed and musically exciting documentation of the vastly rich contribution the South has made to American culture," with references to the Allman Brothers, Chuck Berry, Aretha Franklin, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Dale Earnhardt and Rosa Parks." I was once a disc jockey at a rural station in Southern Kentucky that played all those artists, and would still like to have a station formatted on the overlap between country, rock, blues and bluegrass.

That sort of "roots music" is harder to find in larger markets, dominated by large companies that program to niche audiences. And it's getting harder, Masciotra writes: "For most of the history of popular radio, small markets and the nation’s regions were given equal power when determining the Billboard chart rankings. For example, John Mellencamp grew in popularity throughout the Midwest before making it to flagship stations in New York and Los Angeles. Lynyrd Skynyrd started first as a Southern band. Recent changes in the way Billboard compiles its rankings have given priority to stations in the largest markets. And that is killing the kind of heartland rock played by Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Tom Petty and Bob Seger."

That's why "Springsteen’s 'Devils and Dust,' a subtle anti-war folk song told from the perspective of an active-duty solider in Iraq, and Mellencamp’s 'Our Country,' an anthem calling for unity against bigotry, poverty, and war, received greater airplay on country radio and Country Music Television than they did on rock formats," Masciotra writes. He says McGraw is one of the best at what makes country music successful, dealing with "real life issues of love, communal struggle and solidarity, as well as the existential dread and joy that bridge Saturday night and Sunday morning [I hear Ralph Stanley calling]. . . because he carries a commitment to progressive reform and a willingness to wrestle with the darker side of human nature, both personal and political. It is through this multi-colored, cracked lens that McGraw sings his music, looks at the world, and raises his 'Southern Voice'."