Central City and Rockport, Kentucky

First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now more-or-less a twice a week blog), I have my computer select a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”  I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location.  To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is and what the various numbers and abbreviations mean in the first paragraph), please see “About Landing,” (and “Abbreviations” and “Cryptic Numbers”) above.

 Landing number 2101; A Landing A Day blog post number 529.

 Dan –  I just changed “blog post number 528” to “blog post number 529.”  Typically, no big deal, except that today is May 29^th (5/29) which happens to be my birthday!   So cool!  By the way, I’m on vacation in Eleuthera and won’t be posting this until my return.

Moving right along . . .

I broke that nasty 0/4 streak with a USer landing in . . . KY; 21/28; 4/10; 148.6.  Here’s my regional landing map:

 

My local landing map shows Central City, Rockport and the Green River:

 

Obviously, I have a simple watershed analysis.  The Green River (8^th hit) flows on to the Ohio (129^th hit); on to the MM (827^th hit).

My GE shot shows a vague rural landscape along a major highway (the Western Kentucky Parkway).

Of course, there’s Street View coverage from the Parkway.  Can’t see much, but trust me, my landing’s just 200 yards away from the road:

 

Speaking of Street View, here’s a shot from the Parkway of the Green River looking north towards Rockport:

 

I checked out Rockport (pop 333), and could find nothing of interest.  Moving over to Central City (pop 6,000), the one item that caught my eye is that the elder Everly Brother (Don) was born here.  That’s THE Everly Brothers of late 50s and early 60s musical fame.  The family moved from Central City to Chicago soon thereafter, where younger brother Phil was born two years later.  More about the Everls later.

But first, I stumbled upon something cool in the teeny town of Rochester, about 10 mi S of my landing (not even shown on my landing map above).  Rochester’s right on the Green River.  Here’s a Street Atlas map, which certainly looks like there’s a bridge over the river, right?

 

But wait!  Here’s a GE shot of Rochester.  Hmmm.  No bridge.

 

The answer?  There’s a ferry.  A free, publicly-operated ferry.  Here’s a cool video of the ferry, from Jobe Publishing News:

 

As promised, I’m getting back to the Everly Brothers.  I’ll start with a Wiki photo of the brothers, with Don on the right:

 

I’ll dive right in to You Tube, with their 1957 hit “Wake Up, Little Suzy” (posted by nerisob).  This is a great song.  Listen to the words.  Listen to the guitars, and think about how ground breaking this was in 1957:

And while we’re at it, here’s “Cathy’s Clown,”  (1961) also a classic:

Are these guys dudes, or what?  Anyway, I was born in 1950 (making me bordering on ancient); I remember the Everly Brothers well (although I probably remember Wake Up Little Suzy as a “Golden Oldie”).

While I enjoyed their hits, like “Bye, Bye Love” (with the famous cover by Simon & Garfunkle); “Cathy’s Clown,” “All I Have To Do Is Dream,” and “Wake Up, Little Suzy,” I didn’t follow their career, and don’t know any of their songs beyond the four just mentioned and maybe a few more of their Top-40 hits. 

I’ll move along to some tidbits from Wiki.  First this, about the Brothers & Buddy Holly:

The brothers toured extensively with Buddy Holly during 1957 and 1958. According to Holly biographer Philip Norman, they were responsible for the change in style for Holly and the Crickets from Levi’s and T-shirts to the Everlys’ sharp Ivy League suits.

Phil Everly was one of Holly’s pallbearers at his funeral in February 1959. Don did not attend, later saying “I couldn’t go to the funeral. I couldn’t go anywhere. I just took to my bed.”

A Landing A Day has featured Buddy Holly a couple of times, most notably in my Lubbock TX post (Buddy’s home town).  I also landed near Clear Lake IA (just before I began blogging).  Clear Lake is where the plane carrying Buddy Holly went down on that fateful “Day the Music Died.”

The Everly Brothers were hugely successful through 1962, but their star began to dim rapidly as the British Invasion took hold.  Both brothers went through drug problems, but struggled on with their brotherly career, although tensions between the two became apparent.

Back to Wiki:

In 1973, they decided to take time off from performing, announcing their final performance together would be on July 14, 1973, at Knott’s Berry Farm in California. Unfortunately, high tensions between the two began to surface during the show until Phil smashed his guitar and stormed off the stage.  Reportedly, they did not speak to each other for almost a decade, except at their father’s funeral in 1975.

They reunited in 1983, and made music together and with others off and on through the early 2000s.  Phil died of chronic lung problems a few months ago (in January), brought on by a lifetime of smoking.

Here’s some more from Wiki, in the “Legacy” section:

The music of the Everly Brothers is acknowledged to have influenced many successful musicians, including the Beatles, who famously once referred to themselves as “the English Everly Brothers”.  They based the vocal arrangement of “Please Please Me” upon “Cathy’s Clown”.

Keith Richards called Don Everly “one of the finest rhythm guitar players ever”.  Singer-songwriter Paul Simon said in an email the day after Phil’s death: “Phil and Don were the most beautiful sounding duo I ever heard. Both voices pristine and soulful. They witnessed and were part of the birth of rock and roll.”

In 1986, the Everly Brothers were among the first 10 artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Here’s a great You Tube clip of much older Everlys with Simon & Garfunkle in 2003 (posted by MyyyTunes2).  Those old boys can still sing.  Wake Up Little Suzy hasn’t lost anything.  And of course, it closes with all four singing Bye Bye Love:

There’s more I could say, but I’m Everlyed out.

I couldn’t find much in the way of local GE Panoramio shots, but I did find this “On The Road” shot by Marina 1984, showing the Western Kentucky Parkway just west of my landing:

 That’ll do it.

 KS

 Greg

 

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