Everly Brothers Fan Survey

I have created a survey for Everly Brothers fans, hoping to capture some interesting viewpoints and data to use in my dissertation. I was restricted to 10 questions, but I think that will be enough. If any of my fellow musicologists are listening, let me know if the questions seem reasonable or what tweaks need to be made.

When It Pours, I Blog

It’s been raining, or at least cloudy, for what feels like months here in New England so most of us have resorted to rain metaphors.

I go for days, weeks, or months with nothing to blog (or rather, nothing coherent or interesting), then suddenly my cup runneth over, my drain clogs up, the bath water spills over, and I have lots of tidbits and longbits.

I just found a brother duo, the Thompson Brothers, who actively perform and place themselves within the tradition of brother duos. Their website contains some interesting information about gospel music, brother duets, and the connections between the Ulster Scots and the Appalachian region of the southern United States. I think maybe I’ll try to contact them.

Keys and Tempo Analysis

I have posted a table of the key and tempo for each of the Everly Brother singles released by Cadence between 1957 and 1962.

To track all the information that I am collecting on the various songs released by the Everly Brothers, I have a database (I use Bento–simple, cheap, effective, and it works). After I collected the keys and tempos for the 25 songs in question, I exported a CSV file and wrote a Perl script to convert the data to an HTML table. Got kind of misty eyed and nostalgic about my old programming days.

Old Hat Records

My dad sent me a link to Old Hat Records. This company reissues vintage music on CDs. Oddly enough, they are based in my old hometown, Raleigh, NC. I’ve been looking through the track lists for their CDs and there are a couple of examples of brother vocal duos, as well as other vocal duos. Some of these include:

• Cranford and Thompson (a.k.a. The Red Fox Chasers)
• Dixon Brothers
• Charlie Parker and Mack Woolbright
• Allen Brothers
• Kirk McGee and Blythe Poteet
• Grayson and Whitter
• Woodie Brothers (a.k.a. Ephraim Woodie and the Henpecked Husbands)

These tracks appear on the medicine show CD and the two CDs centered on music from North Carolina.

What I Want for Christmas

I want my qualifying exams all done and passed.

I want my proposal to be approved.

I want to make contact with people who were involved with the early days of the Everly Brothers.

I want to make contact with anyone who knew (knows) the brother duets in country music that preceded the Everly Brothers.

I want to talk to people who actually heard the Everly Brothers live or on the radio or bought their records back in the day.

I want to talk to other people who sing in duets about their experiences, how it feels, what makes it special, what makes it hard, and so on.

I want to make my family happy.

I want world peace.

I’m bound to get something from this list.

YouTube Playlist

Click on the Videos link on the right to connect to the YouTube playlists that I am creating. Or go straight to my playlist page on YouTube.

Bloggin fae the ‘Burn: The Louvin Brothers and brother duets

Mark Thompson has some great videos of the Louvin Brothers here: Bloggin fae the ‘Burn: The Louvin Brothers and brother duets.