Eternal Sounds: A Tribute to the Everly Brothers

The
recent
death of Phil Everly
reminds us of the artistic legacy the Everly Brothers
left behind. Don and Phil were born in 1937 and 1939 respectively, to a musical
family with working-class roots. Their father, Ike, was a coalminer in Kentucky
who dreamed of providing for his family through guitar and song. In 1939 he and
his wife, Margaret, moved the family to Chicago, where Ike hoped to score big
in the music business. But work was scarce and the environment harsh, so the
Everlys relocated again, this time to Iowa.

Ike landed a job at the local
radio station, singing country tunes and entertaining his audiences with wry
humor. His wife and sons often joined in, with the highlight being a Christmas
special, when Don and Phil stole the show, including a performance by
seven-year-old Phil singing “Silent Night.”

The family soon earned a name
for themselves and began touring the region. By the early 1950s, however, with
the record industry booming and demand for live entertainment declining, work
for the Everlys began to dry up. Ike took a job in construction and Margaret
became a beautician. But their sons, determined to keep the family dream alive,
set out to Nashville with their guitars and a few original songs, hoping to
score a record deal.

Don sang the lead and Phil
sang the harmony. They spent days on end in the alleyway of the
Grand Ole Opry, waiting
for someone—anyone—to offer them an audition. Nothing came of it. Don and Phil
may have given up right then, but the acclaimed country singer
Chet Atkins was able to get them a
modest record deal, leading to another, which is when their legend began.

Cadence Records signed the
Everlys, but didn’t realize what they had until they paired them with Boudleaux
and Felice Bryant, a talented husband and wife songwriting team. One of their
songs, “Bye, Bye Love,” had been rejected by thirty artists, but the Everlys
saw potential in it, reworking the song until they found just the right chords.
Listening to the finished product, the Bryants knew they had something special:
a southern duo who could combine country flavor with the new sound of rock. Felice Bryant recalled the
moment well:

Boudleaux
loved the sound that the Everly’s got. It was such a tight, clean, pure
harmony. And it had an innocence about it. It was so fresh. It was just like
slicing a spring tomato, you know? It was beautiful.

Beautiful, and wildly
successful. “Bye Bye Love” became an
instant sensation, selling over a million copies. It was followed by a string
of other smash hits, including “Wake up Little Susie,”
“Bird Dog,” “Problems,” and “All I Have to Do is Dream,”
all penned by the Bryants. The brothers also proved they could write songs
themselves, co-writing “Cathy’s Clown,” an
intricately structured ballad about romance and rejection which sold eight
million copies.

It wasn’t just the excellence
of these songs that made the Everlys great; it was their delivery. Perhaps
because they were siblings and had similar timbre and inflection, they sang
with an
astonishing fluidity and harmony.
From the late 1950s until the early 1960s, Don and Phil were in such demand,
that even while serving in the marines, they appeared on the Ed Sullivan
Show—in full uniform—singing “Crying in the Rain,”
another hit.

At that point, the Everlys
signed a lucrative new deal with Warner Bros. Records, and began touring the
world to packed audiences. After working so hard, they achieved everything they
had desired, but fame and fortune eventually consumed them. They experienced
difficulties in their personal lives and no longer found their records
consistently topping the charts. The pressures of the industry and their
off-stage feuds began to weigh heavily upon them, until everything spilled over
one summer day in California.

In 1973, the Everlys gave a
performance at Knott’s Berry Farm, outside Los Angeles. Don and others members
of the band had partied much too hard the night before. By the third song,
Don’s usually flawless voice gave out. A frustrated and furious Phil raised his
guitar high in the air, and smashed it on the ground, before exiting the stage.
A stunned Don was left to finish the concert, excruciatingly, by himself. When
a spectator cried out, “Where’s Phil?” Don was heard to say “the Everly
Brothers died ten years ago.”

The two barely spoke for the
next decade. They went on to have solo careers, but everywhere they travelled,
fans kept asking,
begging, for a
reunion. The outpouring of requests finally had an effect. In 1983, Don phoned
Phil, who had been thinking about doing the same from his end, and it was
decided they would sing again.

A concert was set for Royal
Albert Hall in London, the scene of some of their greatest performances, and
where their father, Ike, had once joined them and brought down the House. The
only time the Brothers had spoken during their estrangement had been at Ike’s
funeral, in 1975. The reunion concert would be performed in his honor.

The result, as fans and
critics attested, was magic. Though older and a little untested, their dual
voices were clear and strong, and their distinctive sound and classic songs
as good as ever. A new record deal was signed
and Paul McCartney, a long-time admirer, wrote the song “On the Wings of a
Nightingale,” which the Everly’s
sang
beautifully
, generating a new hit for them at middle age.

Another song, “Born Yesterday,” about the importance of
overcoming a family crisis, followed and quickly climbed the charts. In 1986,
the Everlys were part of the first class inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame, and in 1994 the disc boxed set Heartaches
and Harmonies
was released
covering forty years of their work. Bill Inglot, the musical engineer who produced
the set, expressed his admiration for the Everlys in an interview with me:
“What they gave us is unique. It was a gift. It can’t be learned, and it is
timeless.”

In his later years, Phil
suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary illness, the result of
many
years of smoking
(which never, amazingly, affected his voice). But even as
he did, he left one last present for his fans,
a
heartfelt rendition of “Silent Night
”—just as he sang it as a seven year
old over sixty years before, on the faint town radio in Shenandoah, Iowa.

When he died on January 3rd,
there were conflicting reports about the state of his relationship with Don,
with some suggesting the two may have drifted apart yet again. After a time of
mourning, Don released a statement,
setting
the record straight
:

I loved my brother very much. I always thought I’d be the one to go first. I was
listening to one of my favorite songs that Phil wrote and had an extreme
emotional moment just before I got the news of his passing. I took that as a
special spiritual message from Phil saying goodbye. Our love was and will
always be deeper than any earthly differences we might have had.

It was a simple and beautiful
statement—just like their music—and one that summed up their relationship,
fittingly, on the perfect note. 

William Doino Jr. is a contributor to Inside the Vatican magazine, among many other publications, and writes often about religion, history and politics. He contributed an extensive bibliography of works on Pius XII to The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII. His previous articles can be found here.

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