This odd, new Everly Brothers album is full of Ma and Pa and sweet gospel singin' on the radio, harmonizing "family style and country style," and memories of the old home in Brownie, Kentucky. It is also a showcase for the superb talent of the Everlies as they are today.

To accomplish this, producer Lenny Waronker has woven an unusual fabric of Southern California salon rock, country-tinged rock, and tapes from the Everly Family radio show of 1952. The result is a warm, sentimental album that is nostalgic and contemporary at the same time.

All of the songs on the album are fine vehicles for the high lonesome harmonies and the liquid guitar picking of the brothers Everly. Standouts are two of Merle Haggard's great prison songs, "Mama Tried" and "Sing Me Back Home," rendered with fine taste, a perfectly delightful Randy Newman song, "Illinois," and two re-worked traditional numbers, "T for Texas" and "Shady Grove." These last two, especially, are beautifully arranged and sung, turned into irresistible toetappers — sort of electric hoedown music.

The final montage of radio tapes, "Shady Grove," and Carl Davis' classic "Kentucky" doesn't quite come off, but in light of the merits of the rest of the album that's perfectly excusable. Anybody interested in the so-called country revival now sweeping rock should pick up this album. It's right fine.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.