Like this:

Alison Krauss and Robert Plant do a great cover of The Everly Brothers’ 1964 chestnut “Gone, Gone, Gone” (I see that the Krauss/Plant video looks to be one Ann-Margret appearance short of a Ken Russell film, but I digress).

What’s interesting to me is that a band like The Everlys would be knocked off the radio by the very bands that worshipped them.  The Beatles’ close harmony singing was right out of the Phil & Don playbook.  Same goes for the Hollies.  But all the exciting noise out of Britain caused teens and radio programmers alike that year to ignore some really amazing homegrown stuff.  It’s a shame cuz listen to those driving guitars and relentless tom toms.  In a just world, instead of struggling up to #31 on Billboard, “Gone, Gone, Gone” should have been huge for the brothers.  Roy Orbison is another one who had a couple of amazing singles do well in ’64 (“Oh, Pretty Woman”, “It’s Over”), but by ’65 his commercial fortunes were pretty much over too until the ’80s.  So while we could justly celebrate the shunting aside of The Singing Nuns and Bobby Vintons of the world, the collateral damage was the great stuff that fell by the wayside in the Anglophilic rush.

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