Film Reviews

The Everly Brothers

Harmonies from Heaven (Eagle Rock Entertainment)

81lrg7unnl-_sl1500_Ike Everly, respected folk and country entertainer and guitar master, realizes that his young sons blend their heavenly voices as only siblings can. He later features them on his radio show, The Everly Family Radio Show (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWf63dty8DI). Enter Chet Atkins and Boudleaux and Felice Bryant. Their past and future melt into the most popular and emulated duo of all time with “Bye Bye Love” in 1957.

Harmonies from Heaven, a two-DVD set, follows the brothers through interviews and classic footage from their childhood throughout their lives. Fans like Graham Nash, Art Garfunkel, Keith Richards and others recall their influence on every British group to invade America and the world. Richards and Waddy Wachtel praise Don’s guitar style as an influence on their own, but, above that, how they cried at their vocals because there was “nothing so beautiful.”

Beginning with their early appearances on The Julius LaRosa Show and American Bandstand, their lives, their extreme personal differences, their special relationship with the Bryants and their heavenly harmonies are highlighted. Jake Bugg interprets his favorite Everly songs, but the proof of their talent comes with disc two, a full concert at Chequers Nightclub in Sydney, Australia, in 1968. Like so many musical siblings, they shared a love-hate relaltionship. The acrimony ended whenever they stepped up to a single microphone and produced their celestial sound. That sound, as Keith Richards affirms, is “indefinable.”

—Gene Knapp

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