THE SONG CRAFT
"Wake Up Little Susie"—an across-the-board No. 1—scored a direct
hit in the burgeoning teen pop market and became the template
for ensuing Bryant-penned hits. Impeccably crafted and crowned
with stunning end-to-end harmony tailored to the Everlys’ vocal
range, "All I Have to Do Is Dream," "Bird Dog" (both chart-toppers),
and "Devoted to You" were a full step up from the basic formulas
of the early rock era. Most of the credit belongs to the brothers’
seamless harmony parts, which varied between the simple close-third
intervals of "Bye Bye Love" to the country fifths and sixths of
"Brand New Heartache."
For Don and Phil, it was merely harking back to the music of
their childhood. "We’d grown up listening to people like the Delmore
Brothers," notes Phil. "And so many hymns are structured that
way as well. The Bell Sisters, out of Canada, had some interesting
interval stuff. We’d just been used to doing that sort of thing
all along."
Many of the tunes were marked by Boudleaux’s love for intricately
structured chord progressions as well. Take "Sleepless Nights,"
a haunting 1960 album cut (later covered by Emmylou Harris), which
begins in the key of F, takes a right turn into E, moves quickly
back to F, jumps to Eb for the beginning of the bridge, devotes
the second half of the bridge to F#, and then returns to F for
the final verse—all in under two-and-a-half minutes.
And then there were the Bryant lyrics, which read like a laundry
list of teenage turmoil: "can’t get the car," "why can’t I trust
in you," "our reputation is shot," "should have stayed in bed."
At times the gravity of these problems could reach life-threatening
proportions: "I need you so, that I could die." You have
to look long and hard to find a happy ending anywhere in the early
Everly Brothers catalog.
By comparison, Don’s reflections as an actual teenager were surprisingly
mature and hopeful. "Our ages won’t be there to draw the line,"
the payoff to Don’s early masterwork "Maybe Tomorrow," sounds
like anything but puppy love, especially when treated with the
brothers’ soaring vocal harmony. Even the downtrodden imagery
of "I Wonder If I Care as Much"—"The tears that I had shed by
day / give relief and wash away the memory of the night before
/ I wonder if I’ll suffer more"—reads like Shakespeare compared
to the "she sure looks happy, I sure am blue" sentiments of A-side
partner "Bye Bye Love." But, says Don, that was all by design.
"Boudleaux really knew how to take it to the teenage audience
during that period—he was the classic tunesmith—whereas I would
just write what I felt," observes Don. "On the other hand, a few
years later I came up with ‘Cathy’s Clown,’ and Boudleaux had
‘Love Hurts’—so it kind of got reversed."
INSIDE STUDIO B
By the time of "All I Have to Do Is Dream," the Everlys had moved
over to RCA’s newly constructed Studio B at 1610 Hawkins Street,
becoming one of the first acts to contribute to the soon-to-be-famous
Nashville Sound. Though Studio B was a roomier facility than the
McGavock Street site, the technical constraints of the time nonetheless
demanded a combination of top-shelf musicianship and engineering
creativity. Early on, the brothers had been afforded a single
mic for both vocals and Don’s acoustic (Phil, by and large, didn’t
play on the sessions). Edenton and bassist Floyd Chance were relegated
to a mic-sharing arrangement as well, and one mic each was dedicated
to drums, piano, and lead guitar.
"Back then you couldn’t get two guitars with two singers on one
mic," notes Edenton. "When Don would come to do his riff, he’d
just hold his guitar up higher! And I would help him out by doubling
his part. But everything was going down live, and this was even
before the number system came in, so it was all from memory. And
if you made a mistake, everybody had to do it over. And they would
definitely frown upon that."
For Phil, microphone economy was really nothing new. "Up to that
point, we’d been using only one mic for the live shows anyway,"
he notes. "If we needed to add more guitar in places, our engineer
Shelby Coffin would just roll up the fader and then quickly bring
it back down. You can hear that on ‘Problems’ especially, or any
of those guitar-riff songs. It became like an effect."
Despite the constraints of the studio—and because of the need
to be cohesive—the Everlys worked diligently, effortlessly cutting
one take after another (occasionally nailing a song in fewer than
five tries), sometimes prearranging the tunes, other times quickly
working out the band parts just prior to rolling tape. "It was
just a great situation for a while," says Don. "We had the top
Nashville session musicians, and we’d come in with the ideas,
the arrangements already figured out, and we’d just go in and
do it. I think a lot of people didn’t really understand where
it was coming from—particularly Wesley, who thought it was like
magic. But eventually it became a problem—especially when we couldn’t
cut anything that wasn’t from Acuff-Rose. We began to have a real
tough time with that."
Felice Bryant agrees. "That whole combination of Archie Bleyer,
the Everlys, and Boudleaux was spectacular," she recalls. "We
were hitting three charts. Everything was working. The only thorn
in the damn thing was Wesley Rose."
Realizing he’d caught lightning in a bottle, publisher Rose instituted
a lockout on any material that wasn’t directly under his purview.
Such an arrangement put added pressure on the Bryants and the
Everlys, who almost without exception had penned all the Everly
Brothers hits through 1959.
"Wesley just got greedy," contends Bryant. "And he would use
the Everlys as a stick: ‘If you want the Everlys, then you have
to take this one, that one, and the other one.’ Wesley had a good
business sense in the beginning, but eventually it became very
destructive. He even thought that the lead singer—Don—was the
show. He didn’t understand sibling harmony, that symbiotic relationship.
He thought anybody could do what Phil did."
Unlike many of their youthful peers, the Everlys—already music
industry veterans—attempted to maintain some control of their
business interests. Tensions reached a head late in 1959 when
the brothers decided to go with their musical instincts—and straight
over the head of Rose.
A year earlier, Don had heard Chet Atkins performing a French
instrumental called "Je t’appartiens" (I Belong to You) and was
immediately taken by the song’s captivating melody. "Let It Be
Me"—the title of their English version—was cut at New York’s Bell
Sound (the boys’ first non-Nashville session) in order to incorporate
a first-ever Everly Brothers string section. "Let It Be Me" would
eventually become among the most popular of all Everlys records.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t published by Acuff-Rose.
"Wesley almost ruined that whole session," says Don. "He just
stood there shaking his head the whole time. He just couldn’t
hear it—even though I still think it turned out to be the best
all-around ballad we ever did. But that was the beginning of the
break, right there."
DONE MOVED ON
With the beginning of the 1960s came a new label (Warner Bros.)
and a desire to make a clean break from the restrictive Acuff-Rose
environment. That meant being cut off from the still gushing stream
of songs the Bryants were writing. But in the face of adversity,
Don responded with two of his best works ever.
"Don had ‘Cathy’s Clown’ nearly done," remembers Phil. "I came
in to help him finish it off, and then we took it over to RCA
with just our guitars. Buddy Harman, who besides playing sessions
also used to play drums down at the local strip joint, was there,
so we just stood right over him and went for a different kind
of rhythm, going through various ideas. And then it just came
together right there."
Recorded precisely three years after their first Cadence sessions,
"Cathy’s Clown"—featuring Phil’s soon-to-be Beatles-esque added
sixth harmony—became the duo’s biggest single ever, followed four
months later by the nearly percussionless beauty of "So Sad,"
another Top Ten hit.
There would be other Warner hits as well—including 1962’s "Crying
in the Rain" from the pen of Carole King—but the Everly Brothers
had already reached the top. By the time the Beatles ushered in
the British Invasion, Don and Phil would be at war with their
own image.
"The truth is, if you have about a five-year hot streak, you’re
probably going to be around for a long, long time," contends Phil.
"But it’s inevitable that that hot period will be weighing on
you forever." It’s a point that still seems to weigh on Don’s
mind as well. "We got caught up in being the Everly Brothers,"
he says flatly. "People expect a certain sound—and that’s what
you have to give them."
Only in their 20s, the Everlys were still a thoroughly creative
entity unwilling to be relegated to the oldies circuit. Like the
Beach Boys of the post–Pet Sounds era, the duo found an
adoring audience overseas. "At the point that American rock ’n’
roll was deemed unacceptable," says Phil, "it became very acceptable
in England."
The brothers—who by then had developed a solid writing partnership—immediately
proved they were more than capable of making the shift into the
electric era. "Gone, Gone, Gone," "The Price of Love" (a U.K.
No. 2), and "Man with Money" (covered by the Who) were strong
reflections of their British surroundings, though still country
at the core.
"We were spending a lot of time over there, and it was really
working for us," says Don. "Then we’d come back over here and
run into a band from Iowa talking with English accents! It was
a weird time, mostly because there was no sense of humor. A lot
of the people who were doing that kind of music didn’t even belong
in music in the first place."
The brothers fought valiantly to stay in step through the remainder
of the ’60s, first growing out their hair, later donning paisley
duds and tie-dye T-shirts. In 1967, they were briefly rewarded
when the Terry Slater–composed "Bowling Green" squeaked onto the
Top 40. Several years later, The Everly Brothers Show,
a summer-long television replacement for The Johnny Cash Show,
helped keep the cause alive. And with country rockers like Poco,
the Byrds, and the Flying Burrito Brothers ushering in the ’70s
with a sound the Everlys themselves helped foster, good things
still seemed possible.
But after nearly 15 years of recording, touring, writing, traveling,
eating, and rooming together, the Everlys’ relationship began
to founder. Exacerbated by their inability to fully regain an
American audience (they’d had but two minor chart appearances
since 1962), the Everly Brothers finally splintered in 1973—almost
literally. Phil threw down his guitar and walked off the stage
at Knotts Berry Farm, leaving Don to finish the show alone in
front of a stunned audience.
Session pro Waddy Wachtel, who’d been asked to join the Everlys’
touring band by then-bandleader Warren Zevon, remembers a slightly
more upbeat ending to the Everlys’ first era. "When I took the
job," he recalls, "the guitar incident had already happened and
people were telling me, ‘Look, don’t try to get them together,
because they hate each other. Just don’t try to mix them up.’
Within a week, we had the both of them up in our hotel room every
night after the show, singing and playing. I’m sitting there,
and it’s the Everly Brothers in my room, and it’s the most incredible
sound you’ve ever heard in your life. That’s when Donald showed
me the open-G intro to ‘Bye Bye Love.’ I’ll never forget that.
It was like somebody slapped me in the face with a wet towel.
On stage we’d been doing the songs all slick and wrong, and I
hated it. So I asked him if he’d let me teach the band the right
way to play the songs, and he agreed. And that’s how the tour
ended."
STANDING THE TEST OF TIME
Seventeen years elapsed between the Everlys’ first recording
sessions and their final concert performance in 1973. Almost another
17 years has passed since the Everlys mended fences once again
in the early ’80s and climbed the stage, tuxedo clad, for a reunion
concert in London’s Royal Albert Hall. Although their second-half
recorded output has hardly kept pace with the first (with only
three albums of new material, EB 84, 1986’s Born Yesterday,
and Some Hearts from 1988), the brothers have settled
into a serviceable working relationship, playing a handful of
shows each year, many within Las Vegas city limits.
Off the road, Phil keeps busy with his Burbank-based Everly Music
Company, which manufactures a wide variety of guitar strings.
When not looking after his own enterprise—the Everlys’ Lake Malone
Inn in western Kentucky—Don still pulls out the old Gibson on
a regular basis. "I’ve started writing again in the thumbpick
style, like my dad," says Don, who recently gathered together
some musical cohorts with the idea of recording a solo effort.
"But," he laments, "those things are just so hard to arrange these
days."
Though it’s likely the duo will continue to be a working entity
well into the coming decade, Don and Phil both concede that their
last recording session is probably behind them. "We’re just going
to leave it as it was," says Don philosophically. "It works that
way. Because nothing is as simple as it once was."
For Phil, just singing live with his brother is good enough from
here on out. "Harmony, if you’re doing it right, is like nothing
else," he says. "It lets you see the total picture. It’s like
riding in a wagon—instead of pulling it."
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
Heartaches and Harmonies (four-CD set), Rhino
71779 (1994). Possibly the finest historical collection of Everly
Brothers music, from their earliest radio recordings (circa 1951)
to a ’90s revisiting of "Don’t Let Our Love Die," their last studio
effort to date.
All They Had to Do Was Dream, Rhino 70214 (1985).
For the curious, this interesting collection contains alternate
takes of Cadence-era tracks including "All I Have to Do Is Dream,"
"Hey, Doll Baby," and "Maybe Tomorrow."
The Reunion Concert, Mercury 824479 (1984). The
brothers bury the hatchet—musically—at their historic Royal Albert
Hall reunion in 1983.
A Date with the Everly Brothers, Warner Bros. 1395
(1961, out of print). More solid originals, such as Phil’s "Made
to Love," as well as the rhythm rocker "So How Come," which became
a Beatles concert staple a short time later.
It’s Everly Time! Warner Bros. 1381 (1960, out
of print). The brothers’ first album for Warner was their best.
Includes Don’s beautiful "So Sad" and the obscure Boudleaux Bryant
gem "Sleepless Nights."
Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, Cadence 3106 (1959),
reissued as Rhino 70212 (1990). Proving that they never forgot
their roots, the Everlys put the teen hits on hold and delved
into a handful of old C&W staples, with only acoustic guitar
and upright bass for backing.
Read
Part
One of the Everly Brothers story.
Read
about the Everly's guitars and gear in What
They Play.
Excerpted
from
Acoustic Guitar
magazine, August 2000, No. 92. That issue also
contained a transcription of "Wake Up Little Susie."
For the
latest on the Everlys, visit their fan club at www.everlybrothers.com
or call (206) 783-1798.
