The Everly Brothers
The Everly Brothers were an American musical duo known for steel-string acoustic guitar playing and close-harmony singing. Consisting of Isaac Donald "Don" Everly and Phillip "Phil" Everly, the duo combined elements of rock and roll, country, and pop, becoming pioneers of country rock.
Don and Phil Everly were raised in a musical family. As children in the 1940s, they appeared on radio in Iowa, singing with their parents as the Everly Family. During their high-school years in Knoxville, they performed on radio and television. The brothers gained the attention of Chet Atkins, who began to promote them. They began writing and recording their own music in 1956. The brothers' first hit song was "Bye Bye Love", which hit number one in the spring of 1957. Additional hits, including "Wake Up Little Susie", "All I Have to Do Is Dream", and "Problems", followed in 1958. In 1960, they signed with Warner Bros. Records and recorded "Cathy's Clown", which was their biggest-selling single. The brothers enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1961 and their output dropped off, though additional hit singles continued through 1962. Their final top-10 hit was "That's Old Fashioned ".
The Everly Brothers experienced a decline in popularity in the United States in the 1960s due to changing tastes in popular music, long-simmering disputes with Acuff-Rose Music CEO Wesley Rose, and increased drug use by the brothers. However, the duo continued to release hit singles in the U.K. and Canada, and had many successful tours in the 1960s. In the early 1970s, the brothers began releasing solo recordings; they ended their musical partnership in 1973. In 1983, the Everly Brothers reunited. They continued to perform periodically as a duo until about 2005, when they quietly broke up again. Phil Everly died in 2014, Don Everly in 2021.
The Everly Brothers had a major influence on the music of the generation that followed them. Many of the top acts of the 1960s were heavily influenced by the close-harmony singing and acoustic guitar playing of the Everly Brothers; those acts included the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Bee Gees, and Simon & Garfunkel. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked the Everly Brothers number one on its list of the 20 Greatest Duos of All Time. The brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class of 1986 and into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001. Don Everly was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2019, earning the organization's first Iconic Riff Award for his distinctive rhythm guitar introduction on "Wake Up Little Susie".
History
Early life, family, and education
Don was born in Brownie, Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, on February 1, 1937, and Phil in Chicago, Illinois, on January 19, 1939. Their parents were Isaac Milford "Ike" Everly Jr., a guitar player, and Margaret Embry Everly. Don and Phil were of mostly German and English descent and had also some Cherokee ancestry. Actor James Best, also from Muhlenberg County, was a first cousin, the son of Ike's sister.Margaret was 15 when she married Ike, who was 26. Ike worked in coal mines from age 14, but his father encouraged him to pursue his love of music, and Ike and Margaret began singing together. The Everly brothers spent most of their childhood in Shenandoah, Iowa. They attended Longfellow Elementary School in Waterloo, Iowa, for a year but then moved to Shenandoah in 1944, where they remained through early high school. Ike Everly had a music show on KMA and KFNF in Shenandoah in the mid-1940s,
The family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1953, where the brothers attended West High School. In 1955, the family moved to Madison, Tennessee, while the brothers moved to Nashville. Don had graduated from high school in 1955, and Phil attended Peabody Demonstration School in Nashville, from which he graduated in 1957. Both could now focus on recording.
Early career (1940s-1950s)
As children, Don and Phil Everly sang on KMA and KFNF in Shenandoah as "Little Donnie and Baby Boy Phil". The brothers also sang on radio with their parents as the Everly Family.While in Knoxville, the brothers found work performing on Cas Walker’s Farm and Home Hour, a regional radio and TV variety program. The brothers caught the attention of family friend Chet Atkins, manager of the RCA Victor studios in Nashville. Shortly thereafter, their mother moved the family to Nashville. Despite affiliation with RCA Victor, Atkins somehow arranged for the Everly Brothers to record for Columbia Records in early 1956. Their "Keep a-Lovin' Me", which Don wrote and composed, flopped, and they were dropped from the Columbia label.
Atkins introduced the Everly Brothers to Wesley Rose, of Acuff-Rose music publishers. Rose told them he would secure them a recording deal if they signed to Acuff-Rose as songwriters. They signed in late 1956, and in 1957, Rose introduced them to Archie Bleyer, who was looking for artists for his Cadence Records. The Everlys signed and made a recording in February 1957. "Bye Bye Love" had been rejected by 30 other acts. Their record reached number two on the pop charts, behind Elvis Presley's " Teddy Bear", and number one on the country and number five on the rhythm and blues charts. The song, by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, became the Everly Brothers' first million-seller.
Working with the Bryants, they had hits in the United States and the United Kingdom, the biggest being "Wake Up Little Susie", "All I Have to Do Is Dream", "Bird Dog", and "Problems". The Everlys, though they were largely interpretive artists, also succeeded as songwriters, especially with Don's " I Kissed You", which hit number four on the US pop charts.
The brothers toured with Buddy Holly in 1957 and 1958. According to Holly's biographer Philip Norman, they were responsible for persuading Holly and the Crickets to change their outfits from Levis and T-shirts to the Everlys' Ivy League suits. Don said Holly wrote and composed "Wishing" for them. "We were all from the South", Phil observed of their commonalities. "We'd started in country music." Although some sources say Phil Everly was one of Holly's pallbearers in February 1959, Phil said in 1986 that he attended the funeral and sat with Holly's family, but was not a pallbearer. Don did not attend, saying, "I couldn't go to the funeral. I couldn't go anywhere. I just took to my bed."
Mid-career (1960s–1973)
After three years on Cadence, the Everlys signed with Warner Bros. Records in 1960, where they recorded for 10 years. Their first Warner Bros. hit, 1960's "Cathy's Clown", which they wrote and composed themselves, sold eight million copies and became the duo's biggest-selling record. "Cathy's Clown" was number WB1, the first selection Warner Bros. Records ever released in the United Kingdom.Other successful Warner Bros. singles followed in the United States, such as "So Sad ", "Walk Right Back", "Crying in the Rain", and "That's Old Fashioned". From 1960 to 1962, Cadence Records released Everly Brothers singles from the vaults, including "When Will I Be Loved", written and composed by Phil, and "Like Strangers".
In the UK, they had 18 singles in the top 40 with Warner Bros. in the 1960s, including a string of top-10 hits through 1965 that featured "Lucille"/"So Sad", "Walk Right Back"/"Ebony Eyes", "Temptation", "Cryin' in the Rain", and "The Price of Love".
By 1962, records by the Everlys had reportedly generated $35 million in sales. In 1961, the brothers had a falling out with Wesley Rose during the recording of "Temptation". Rose was reportedly upset that the Everlys were recording a song that he had not published, hence for which he would not be paid any publishing royalties. Rose made efforts to block the record's release. The Everlys held firm to their position, and as a result, in the early 1960s, they were shut off from Acuff-Rose songwriters. These included Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who had written and composed most of their hits, as well as the Everlys themselves, who were still contracted to Acuff-Rose as songwriters and had written several of their own hits. From 1961 through early 1964, the Everlys recorded songs by other composers to avoid paying any royalties to Acuff-Rose. They used the pseudonym "Jimmy Howard" as writer or arranger on two selections they wrote and recorded during this time. This ruse, however, was ultimately unsuccessful, as Acuff-Rose gained legal possession of the copyrights once the deception was discovered.
Around this time, the brothers also set up their own label, Calliope Records, for solo projects. Using the pseudonym "Adrian Kimberly", Don recorded a big-band instrumental version of Edward Elgar's first "Pomp and Circumstance" march, which Neal Hefti arranged and which charted in the United States top 40 in mid-1961. Further instrumental singles credited to Kimberly followed, but none of those charted. Phil formed the Keestone Family Singers, which featured Glen Campbell and Carole King. Their lone single, "Melodrama", failed to chart, and by the end of 1962, Calliope Records had gone out of business.
The Everly Brothers' last United States top-10 hit was 1962's "That's Old Fashioned ", a song recorded but unreleased by The Chordettes and given to the brothers by their old mentor, Archie Bleyer.
In succeeding years, the Everly Brothers sold fewer records in the United States. Their enlistments in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in October 1961 took them out of the spotlight. One of their few performances during their Marine Corps service was on The Ed Sullivan Show, on February 18, 1962, when they performed "Jezebel" and "Crying in the Rain" while outfitted in their Marine uniforms.
Following their discharges from active duty, the Everlys resumed their career, but with little success in the United States. Of their 27 singles on Warner Bros. from 1963 through 1970, only three made the Billboard Hot 100, and none peaked higher than number 31. Album sales were also down. The Everlys' first two albums for Warner peaked at number 9 US, but after that, of a dozen more LPs for Warner Bros., only one made the top 200 – 1965's "Beat & Soul", which peaked at number 141.
The Everlys' dispute with Acuff-Rose lasted until 1964, when they resumed writing and composing, as well as working with the Bryants. By then, however, both of the brothers were addicted to amphetamines. Don's condition was worse, as he was taking Ritalin; his addiction lasted three years, until he suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for treatment. The mainstream media did not report either brothers' addiction. When Don collapsed in England in mid-October 1962, reporters were told he had food poisoning; when the tabloids suggested he had taken an overdose of pills, his wife and his brother insisted he was suffering physical and nervous exhaustion. Don's poor health ended their British tour; he returned to the United States, leaving Phil to carry on with Joey Page, their bass player, taking Don's place.
Though their U.S. stardom had begun to wane two years before the British Invasion in 1964, their appeal was still strong in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The Everlys remained successful in the United Kingdom and Canada for most of the 1960s, reaching the top 40 in the United Kingdom through 1968 and the top 10 in Canada as late as 1967. The 1966 album Two Yanks in England was recorded in England with the Hollies, who also wrote many of the album's songs. The Everlys' final U.S. top-40 hit, "Bowling Green", was released in 1967.
By the end of the 1960s, the brothers had returned to country rock, and their 1968 album, Roots, was hailed by some retrospective critics as "one of the finest early country-rock albums". By the end of the 1960s, though, the Everly Brothers had ceased to be hitmakers in either North America or the UK, and in 1970, following an unsuccessful live album, their 10-year contract with Warner Bros. lapsed. They were the summer replacement hosts for Johnny Cash's ABC-TV television show in 1970; their variety program, Johnny Cash Presents the Everly Brothers, featured Linda Ronstadt and Stevie Wonder.
In 1970, Don released his first solo album, which was unsuccessful. The brothers resumed performing in 1971 and issued two albums for RCA Records in 1972 and 1973. Lindsey Buckingham joined and toured with them in 1972. The Everlys announced their final performance would take place on July 14, 1973, at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, but tensions between the two surfaced and Don told a reporter he was tired of being an Everly Brother. During the show, Phil smashed his guitar and walked off. Don performed solo the following night, commenting to the audience, "The Everly Brothers died 10 years ago". The two did not reunite musically for more than 10 years. On a personal level, they rarely saw or spoke to each other through the rest of the 1970s, though they would be present at important family events -- such as the funeral of their father Ike Everly in 1975.