Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers Passed Away

Phil Everly, who with his brother, Don, comprised the most venerable vocal duet of the rock and roll era. Their elegant musical harmony deeply shaping the Beatles, the Beachboys, the Byrds and countless younger-generation rock. Folk and country vocalists, passed away Friday in Burbank, California of complications from prolonged hindering pneumonic disease, his wife, Patti Everly, told the Los Angeles Times. 

He was 74. “We are brokenhearted,” she said, mentioning the disease comprised the result of a lifetime of cigarette smoking. “He struggled long and backbreaking.

”On the height of their popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Everly Brothers charted almost three dozen hits on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Among them “Cathy’s Clown,” “Wake up Little Susie,” “Bye-Bye Love,” “When Will I Be Loved” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” The Everly Brothers were one of the first 10 performers inducted into the rock music hall of Fame when it took off in 1986.zoom

“They had that sibling sound,” said Linda Ronstadt, who marked among the greatest hits of her career in 1975 with her recording of “When Will I Be Loved,” which Phil Everly wrote. “The information of your DNA is carried in your voice, and you can get a sound (with family) that you never get with somebody who has not akin to you. In addition, they were some such good singers-they were among the foundations, one of the cornerstones of the new rock ‘n’ roll sound.

”Robert Santelli, executive director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, said Friday, “When you talk of musical harmony singing in the popular music of the postwar period, the first target you get is the Everly Brothers. ... You might link between all the 1950s outstanding doo-wop groups and what would come out the 1960s with the Beachboys and the Beatles. They showed up the Beach boys and the Beatles how to sing harmoniousness and integrate that into a pop music form that was irresistible.

”Besides his wife, his brother, Don, their mother, Margaret, sons Jason and Chris, and two granddaughters, survives Everly.