Sustaining a musical career for five decades is a mighty achievement, but in this case 50 years is selling things a little short.
At the age of 17, Ernie and Earl Cate played their first nightclub show in September of 1960, at Fayetteville’s Rockwood Club. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Cate Brothers Band broke into he Billboard Top 20 with “Union Man,” toured England and the US, played The Midnight Special with Ray Charles, recorded albums with Steve Cropper and Tom Dowd, joined Levon Helm and their old friends from the Hawks in a reunited version of The Band, and more. In the 1990s they played two Presidential inaugurations and began releasing a string of independent albums that would carry on into the next decade. Through it all, Ernie and Earl stayed close to their Northwest Arkansas roots and built a sustaining, long term musical family.
