Friday, January 28, 2011

3 Chords & the Truth: Ripples


We start out this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth with a little Gram Parsons -- "Cash on the Barrelhead" off of his "Grievous Angel" album.

It's a classic. It's also a cover version of a little something Charlie and Ira Louvin did years before. The Louvin Brothers made an impression on young Gram Parsons.

And Gram Parsons would carry the word. Carry it into the Byrds, onto their albums, and then onto his own. Of course, all that also makes its way onto the Big Show.

Ripples. The music of the Louvin Brothers -- of Charlie Louvin, who died this week at 83 -- splashed into our cultural consciousness in the early 1940s, really made waves in the '50s, and stuck around on the charts into the '60s.

Ripples. They rocked the Everly Brothers' musical boat. The Everlys rocked the Beatles'. The Beatles' rocked everybody's.

Ripples. The Louvin Brothers were Elvis Presley's favorite country act.



RIPPLES.
Those high harmonies ignited a fierce love of the same in young Emmylou Harris' heart.

Ripples. They keep going out from a long time past . . . from a couple of brothers growing up in north Alabama. They keep rocking somebody's world. Somebody carries the word, and the word -- the sweet harmonies of a long ago song -- inspires yet another generation, one unseen in 1955.

Ripples.
That's what 3 Chords & the Truth is all about this time -- ripples of the musical kind..

Elvis, the Everlys, Emmylou, Gram, the Byrds, the Beach Boys, Elvis Costello and on and on and on and on. Ripples.

Join us this week on the Big Show, and we'll float -- and rock -- your boat. All to the sweet sound of perfect harmony.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

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