Beyond their incomparable singing, The Everly Brothers produced a musical legacy richer than you might suspect. Here are 10 reasons why they deserve your appreciation.
The Everly Brothers united country, rock and roots music with their high harmonies and superb rhythm guitar playing. Don said that when he sang with Phil, it was as though they were inside each other’s minds. Their legacy is enormous. Here are ten reasons to consider their relevance, even today.
1. Following their initial chart success with “Bye Bye Love” and an accompanying album of pop songs, they chose to make a follow-up record of obscure Appalachian hillbilly tunes. And it was something great, something you’d never expect from a couple of pop stars, unless you knew they were the sons of Ike Everly. Their dad was a country musician who played in an authentic Kentucky thumb-picking style and was famous in his own right. Don and Phil called the album Songs Our Daddy Taught Us.
This album proved to be the starting point of Americana. In 2013, Norah Jones and Billie Joe Armstrong recreated the record in its entirety, with the title Foreverly.
2. They introduced the record-buying public to two of the most prolific and talented songwriters ever – the husband and wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. Among the Bryants’ countless creations were:”Bye Bye Love”, “Wake Up Little Susie”, “Bird Dog”, and “All I Have To Do Is Dream”. They loved working with the Everlys. Felice said that Phil Everly had a voice as memorable as the sound of a Stradivarius violin.
3. They gave Roy Orbison his big break when they recorded “Claudette”, a song Roy wrote for his first wife. At the time Orbison was dead broke and had been advised by Nashville brass he’d never make it in music.
4. They gave Warren Zevon his first serious job in music when they hired him as their tour conductor, arranger and pianist. Warren repaid the favour when he asked them to sing backup on his first album.
5. They introduced the tremolo to rock music when they got Chet Atkins to play the opening chord on “All I Have To Do Is Dream”. That chord is just about as famous as the one The Beatles debuted on “Hard Day’s Night”, but it’s more significant. Every guitar player in the world of note rushed to incorporate the tremolo into their sound.
6. They had looks, hair and clothes that revolutionized popular music. Big hair, Ivy league suits, skinny ties – and it’s where The Beatles derived their style. When the Everlys first went to Japan in the late ’50s they stopped traffic with that hair of theirs – cut and styled by their parents Ike and Margaret, who besides being great country singers were home barbers.
7. They made the greatest unknown, but highly influential, album of the ’60s – their 1968 masterpiece Roots is an album that belongs in every library. It’s psychedelic folk-country-rock that paved the way for the Outlaw Country of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. There’s also a direct connection between the production style of that record to the genre-busting Metamodern Sounds in Country and Western Music, recorded by Sturgill Simpson in 2014.
8. They wrote their own songs too, and killer stuff it was: “When Will I Be Loved”, “Maybe Tomorrow”, “So Sad”, “Cathy’s Clown”, “Price of Love” and the real heartbreaker of them all – “I Wonder If I Care As Much”. They weren’t afraid to sing the dark stuff at a time when most pop music was saccharine sweet, meant for teenagers. Their catalogue included “I’m Here To Get My Baby Out of Jail” , and “Ebony Eyes”, and “Kentucky”, songs that spoke of deep emotions and circumstances far beyond teen romance.
9. They set a standard for duo performance and record sales. They had 35 Top 100 Billboard singles and 12 Top 40 albums. They have been voted the Greatest Duo Of All Time by Rolling Stone, ahead of Simon and Garfunkel, Hall and Oates, and The Righteous Brothers, and were among the first 10 artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They’re also in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Paul Simon said about them: “Phil and Don were the most beautiful sounding duo I ever heard. Both voices pristine and soulful.”
10. Their London reunion concert in 1983 has been hailed as one of the greatest concerts ever. The Everlys stuck together for the longest time, on the road, in the studio, on the stage until all that togetherness and the music business itself drove them apart in 1973. But years later they gave it another go, and a quarter century after their initial hits, they still had the voices that could make grown men cry over the sheer beauty of what they brought to a song.
