The Everly Brothers

The Everly Brothers (Don Everly, born Isaac Donald Everly February 1, 1937, Brownie, Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, Phil Everly, born Phillip Everly, January 19, 1939, Chicago, Illinois) are brothers and country-influenced rock and roll performers, known for steel-string guitar playing and close harmony singing. The Everlys are the most successful U.S. rock and roll duo on the Hot 100. Their greatest period came between 1957 and 1964.

Style

The brothers are both guitarists and use a simple vocal harmony mostly based on parallel thirds. With this, each line can often stand on its own as a melody line. This is in contrast to classic harmony lines which, while working well alongside the melody, sound strange by themselves. One example of their close-harmony is "Devoted to You".

The duo's harmony singing had a strong influence on rock and roll groups of the 1960s. The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and Simon & Garfunkel developed their early singing style by performing Everly covers. The Beatles based the vocal arrangement of "Please Please Me" upon "Cathy's Clown."

Early career

Their father Ike Everly was a musician. Ike, with Merle Travis, Mose Rager, and Kennedy Jones, was honored by the construction of The Four Legends Fountain in Drakesboro, Kentucky. Ike Everly had a show on KMA and KFNF in Shenandoah, Iowa, in the 1940s, with his wife Margaret and two young sons. Singing on the show gave the brothers their first exposure to the music industry. The family sang together live and traveled in the area singing as the Everly Family. The Everly Brothers grew up from ages 5 and 7 through early high school in Shenandoah. Their boyhood home is being restored and will be donated to the Shenandoah Historical Society in the spring of 2009.

The Everly Brothers recorded their first single, "Keep A' Lovin' Me", released in 1956, under Chet Atkins, but it flopped. However, their next, "Bye Bye Love", after being rejected by 30 other acts (including Elvis Presley), reached #2 on the pop charts behind Presley's "Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear", hitting #1 on the Country and the R&B charts. The song, written by the husband and wife Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, became the Everly Brothers' first million-seller.

They became stalwarts of Archie Bleyer's Cadence Records label. Working with the Bryants, the duo had hits in the United States and the United Kingdom, the biggest "Wake Up Little Susie", "All I Have to Do Is Dream", and "Bird Dog". Others in this period include "Problems" (Pop #2) and "('Til) I Kissed You" (Pop #4).

The Everly Brothers also toured extensively with Buddy Holly during 1957 and 1958. According to Holly biographer Philip Norman, they were responsible for the change in style for Buddy and the Crickets from Levis and t-shirts to the Everly's sharp Ivy League suits. Don also remembers Buddy as a generous songwriter who wrote 'Wishing' for them. "We were all from the South, we'd started in country music" said Phil Everly.

Phil recollects of their friendship, "If it ever came down to a fight, Buddy was never one to duck out. One time in Florida, we were all going along a street and somehow I got separated from all the others. Suddenly I realise there's this whole group of guys closing in around me. I turned around looking for help, and saw Buddy running, I mean really sprinting - along the sidewalk to help me. He faced up to a whole gang of guys....and they backed off. Seriously, he was ready to take on the whole group."

It was the Everly Brothers who recommended their lawyer, Harold Orenstein, to Buddy in his own management dispute with Norman Petty, following Orenstein's help with their legal wrangle with Wesley Rose. Sadly, Buddy would die before the legal negotiations were complete.

Phil Everly was one of Buddy Holly's pallbearers at his funeral in February 1959. Don Everly did not attend. He later said, "I couldn't go to the funeral. I couldn't go anywhere. I just took to my bed."

The 1960s

Signing with Warner Bros. Records in 1960, they continued to have hits. Their first, 1960's "Cathy's Clown" (written by Don and Phil) sold eight million copies, the duo's biggest-selling record. It was number WB1, first release in the United Kingdom by Warner Brothers Records. Other successful Warner Brothers singles followed, such as "So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad)" (1960) (Pop #7), "Walk Right Back" (1961) (Pop #7), "Crying In The Rain" (1962) (Pop #6), and "That's Old Fashioned" (1962) (Pop #9, their last Top 10 hit). Cadence Records continued to release Everly Brothers singles from the vaults: these included the top ten hit "When Will I Be Loved" (written by Phil) (Pop #8) and the top 40 hit "Like Strangers", as well as lower-charting singles.

However, shortly after signing with Warner Brothers, the Everlys fell out with their manager Wesley Rose, who also administered the Acuff-Rose music publishing company. Consequently for a period in the early 1960s, the Everlys were shut off from Acuff-Rose songwriters. These included Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who had written the majority of the Everlys' hits, as well as Don and Phil Everly themselves, who were also contracted to Acuff-Rose as songwriters and had written several of their own hits. With proven sources of hit material unavailable, the Everlys recorded a mix of covers and songs by other writers. Their last U.S. Top Ten hit was 1962's "That's Old Fashioned" and succeeding years saw the Everly Brothers selling many fewer records in the United States. Their enlistment in the United States Marine Corps in November 1961 also took them out of the spotlight; one of their few performances during their Marines stint was an on-leave appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing "Jezebel" and "Crying In The Rain". Their star had begun to wane two years before the British Invasion in 1964