I was sitting in my eye doctor's office Tuesday morning when a dear friend called me to let me know Margaret Everly had died.
Peter Cooper -- musician, historian, author and mostly damn nice guy and beloved friend -- knew that I had a long-time telephone relationship with my one-time neighbor, who died today at 102. He figured I might care that another of my "telephone pals" had died.
I didn't know Margaret well enough to contribute any knowledge or wisdom or enlightenment to Peter, who always has enjoyed being enlightened. But I did get to know her kindness and her voice during many phone conversations over the years.
I don't really need to go into the decades of telephone contact that I have kept with so many old-timers, mostly musicians but some simply citizens of our world. It has been a simple joy to let people know they haven't been forgotten. I'm the one who has gained by it.
Truth is, most of the folks who were on that list to get a call from me are gone now. Now, I mostly stare at the phone and try to remember some of those people, those conversations. Those calls were part of my lifeblood.
Anyway, I'm going to revise a prior blog post that I wrote last summer when Don Everly died. In that post I referred to my calls with Margaret ... we had lost contact in recent years ... that were initiated in the late 1980s, thanks to late Nashville Banner iconic journalist Bob Battle.
Bob is gone now, long-gone, but it was my joy to work with the legendary journalist in the old and lamented Nashville Banner newsroom.
I usually came to work around 4:30 or 5 a.m. ... and Bob already was there. He may have smelled of the white wine of the night before, but he was a helluva guy, an old-time journalist who knew everyone in Nashville (back when it really was a community and not a high-rise forest for California and New York transplants ... welcome folks, but you don't know how it feels to be me or any Nashvillian.)
Others who beat me into the newsroom included my great friend Max Moss, the wire editor, and clerk Albert Davis. Both of those wonderful gents are dead now. Just about everyone is, I guess.
Anyway, it was Bob who connected me with some of the folks in the entertainment industry and in the world of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Everyone called Bob for advice, as he was a kind old newspaper dinosaur of the type they stopped creating on November 18, 1951. That date is only important to me, by the way. The other participants on that day in Pontiac, Michigan, my mom and my dad (who knew Bob well) are gone now. Just about everyone is, I guess.
Bob, who always wore a pressed white shirt and tie, answered the phone with booming cheer and inquisitive charm. If he thought I should get that call, he'd transfer it.
"This is the mother of The Everly Brothers,'' Bob said one morning. "Maybe you can help her. Her name is Margaret."
It was the first of many chats I had with the mother who raised the greatest harmony duo in the history of music, The Everly Brothers, Don and Phil.
In her calls, she complained about her sons, while also trying to enlist my help in getting them to, as ET (that little space monster) would say "Phone home."
I think Phil was in Los Angeles, hanging out with Warren Zevon, a healthy enough pursuit that I wish I'd been able to enjoy. Lucky I didn't, though, I suppose. I've never understood "moderation." Quit or die.
But Don was here in Nashville and in Kentucky.
A former confidante of both Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, he was hanging out at Brown's Diner, where he obviously enjoyed the hamburgers. That's the only place, other than on the stage, that I ever saw him "perform." Bye-bye hamburger. Bye-bye piles of fries. Bye-bye chili pie ....
One place he wasn't was at his mom's house.
She didn't name which son it was, but just said "my son hasn't visited" or some such.
Since Phil was not around, as he was getting his "shit fucked up," as Zevon would say, or hanging with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (again, something I'd have enjoyed), I guessed it must have been Don she was mostly trying to reach.
Her house was a few blocks from my own, although in a slightly more upscale corner of the neighborhood.
"I just don't know why he doesn't come home," she said. "I kept his room like he had it. It's all painted black..... If he's not coming home, I think I'll get it painted."
Again, it must have been Don's room.
According to published stories, he'd enjoyed LSD with Jimi and others. Again, what about me?? I believe she told me there were posters all over the walls and ceiling of the black room.
The quotes and recollections are hazy and paraphrased, as I wasn't taking notes. She simply was calling to see if I could get her son to visit. And nothing grabs my heart like a distressed mom, unless it's a big, old dog.
I never accomplished that task, getting little Donnie to go home. I tried, I just couldn't track him down.
But I'm sure Don did, on his own, finally visit his mother. There was a legal tangle over ownership of the house she was living in, and I'll bet that Don and his mom finally resolved that issue and perhaps -- I'd like to dream, at least -- Margaret and her bulkier harmonic son got out the paint rollers and covered the walls and ceilings of the room so the house could be sold. I don't imagine that's true, but, what the hell, everyone's dead now.
I should note that she did invite me over to see the room, but by the time I decided to do that, the number I had no longer was in service.
Now both the boys are gone.
And finally, if things work the way we've been taught, if that everlasting optimism spread from pulpits has basis, well Margaret today was reunited with her boys and with her husband, Ike, who led the charge into show biz for the family.
Ike died in 1975.
Phil died in 2014, on the West Coast, where he lived like the rock 'n' roll legend and pioneer that he was.
Don joined the heavenly choir last August.
Given their fractious history, the brothers probably have been spending their eternal time (or is there time in eternity?) arguing about who came out on top in their famous stage tussle back in 1973 at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California. The brothers split for 10 years, but did reunite for commercial purposes 10 years later. It likely was a reteaming that made the testy commercial-reteaming and money grab of Paul and Artie seem sweet by comparison.
Now Mom Margaret is with them, so maybe she can get them to focus on their work in the heavenly choir.
God, it has been said, loves to hear "Wake Up, Little Susie," "All I Have to Do is Dream," "Cathy's Clown," and my personal favorite "That's Old Fashioned (That's the Way Love Should Be.)" Back in 1962, when that was the brothers' last Top 10 hit, I used to play it on the juke box at the Malt Shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was a subtle message to the girls who liked to share my booth. Three plays for a quarter.
We enjoyed sitting side-by-side in the ice cream parlor.
I can hear those great songs whenever I want to. All I have to do is dream.
