THE EVERLY BROTHERS
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1956–1996 |
Early rock’n’roll |
Wake Up Little Susie
(1957) |
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Album
released: December 1957 |
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Tracks: 1) This Little Girl Of Mine; 2)
Maybe Tomorrow; 3) Bye-Bye Love; 4) Brand New Heartache; 5) Keep A Knockin’;
6) Be Bop A-Lula; 7) Rip It Up; 8) I Wonder If I Care As Much; 9) Wake Up Little Susie; 10) Leave My Woman Alone; 11)
Should We Tell Him; 12) Hey Doll Baby. |
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Instead
of starting out by gushing about the beloved classics on this self-titled
album — ‘Bye Bye Love’, ‘Wake Up Little Susie’, ‘I Wonder If I Care As Much’
— I beg permission to concentrate on something different and unexpected:
namely, the cover of Little Richard’s ‘Keep A-Knockin’. Now that song, ‘Keep
A-Knockin’, had been recorded many, many times in various jazz and jump blues
versions prior to Little Richard, but I know very few versions that postdate Little Richard, and the only one
that was any good was by the Sonics — who were arguably the only American
white garage band with a mad vocalist and a mad enough sax player that could
brew a tempest comparable with Little Richard’s. And this song, in his
interpretation, was one of his most tempestuous ever. So
the question is: what on earth were Phil and Don Everly, two sweet, lovable,
closely harmonized kids from Shenandoah, Iowa, thinking, when they chose to
cover this particular song for
their debut album? Wouldn’t it have been obvious that this is the kind of
material as far removed from their comfort zone, spiritually and technically,
as an Alban Berg string quartet? Or were they, like most kids those days,
simply so entranced by the rock’n’roll virus that they just had to give it a go... and damn the
torpedoes? |
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Whatever the initial impulse was, though, what
actually matters is not where they came from but where they ended up at. They
did not even begin to try to recreate the song’s hystrionic, aggressive mood:
there are no opening drum salvos, no maniacal sax solos or screaming, and
even the tempo is subtly slowed down. Instead, what they do is capitalize on
the melodic aspects of the song — turning it into a fun, catchy, friendly
pop-rock number whose primary attraction now are the two brothers’ close
harmonies. If it were not for the lyrics of the song, one could easily see it
played under the balcony of a loved one... heck, just change the words to
"keep a-knockin’ but I can’t
come in" and that’ll be the goddamn truth. And it absolutely works. The
brothers preserve the element of insistence, both through the professionalism
of the backing band (keeping a steady, relentless rhythm pulse) and through
never dropping down the tension in their own singing, while also purging the
song of wildness — a teenage gentlemanly take on the tune that does not
sacrifice its main point. I understand that neither this number, nor Gene
Vincent’s equally gentrified ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’, nor the seriously countrified
boogie of ‘Rip It Up’ are ever going to count as «classic Everly stuff». But
believe me, it is not every day that a decidedly non-rock’n’roll-ish outfit
can take textbook rock’n’roll numbers and make them into thoroughly
enjoyable, sweet and romantic pop-rock. For instance, Buddy Holly, great as
he was in general, was probably at his least interesting when he did covers
of stuff like ‘Ready Teddy’... okay, so maybe Phil and Don, too, are at their
least interesting when they do this stuff, but it’s still pretty interesting.
And if it really is the worst stuff
on the entire LP, then one cannot even begin to imagine how great it is on
the whole. Some of the retrospective critical evaluations like
to play the «formative» game here — too many of these unnecessary rock’n’roll
numbers, too many covers, too uncertain of themselves, setting up the stage
for greater things to come — bullshit, if you pardon my Klingon. The Everlys’
debut presents them as fully mature, fully competent, incredibly diverse and
enjoying life to its fullest in a way they would rarely enjoy it again. If we
do the right thing and count the songwriting duo of Felice and Boudleaux
Bryant as an integral part of the Everly Brothers (and we should), then the
album actually boasts a solid 50/50 ratio of originals and covers; and if you
throw in the fact that the Everlys manage to everlify Ray Charles just as
superbly as they do Little Richard, well, then the LP is just a frickin’
masterpiece. One of the brothers’ secrets is that at the heart of
their work, behind all the sweetness and sentimentality, still lies a fairly
gritty bluesy foundation. It may be a stretch, of course, but I still think
that a big reason why ‘Bye Bye Love’, their first notable single, shot up so
high in the charts were those opening choppy rhythm chords, sounding like
something straight out of John Lee Hooker’s textbook for a few seconds before
they get undercut by the tenor sharpness of "bye bye love, bye bye
happiness" — which, in contrast, sounds like nothing out of anybody
else’s textbook. The verse melody, by the way, is recognizable (it is a minor
variation on ‘You Are My Sunshine’), but that chorus could just as well be
from the German cabaret scene, for all I know. But more than any contrast
between verse and chorus, what grabs you is the intensity of the vocals —
sharp and searing, yet also cheerful and friendly despite the superficial
gloom of the lyrics: think Hank Williams with a well-meaning youthful tease
rather than nasal sneer. Or, if you want a comparison from the other side of
the timeline, think of Simon & Garfunkel’s cover which, like most of
Simon & Garfunkel’s songs, sounds compassionate, melancholic, and
severely introverted. These guys,
however, are no morose intellectual Greenwich Village loners: their point is to make your very bones
tingle with the sound of their harmonies. The point is actually delivered even stronger on the
B-side, Don Everly’s melodically plain country waltz ‘I Wonder If I Care As
Much’. Plain, that is, in terms of basic rhythmic structure, but never plain
in terms of just how much the brothers fill up the sonic space — almost every
single vowel is lovingly extended, so that you almost do not notice them
catching their breath. It is not the most intimate or thought-provoking of
possible interpretations; it could even be accused of being too overtly
manneristic, making it hard to truly believe that "my heart can’t thrive
on misery, my life it has no destiny", but then again, this is no method
acting: after all, when John Lennon sings "my tears are falling like
rain from the sky", you don’t really feel like reaching for your
umbrella, either. The words do not matter as much here as the sheer intensity
of their delivery. There may have been many duets and vocal bands before the
Everlys, but no pop singer ever dared to go all in before the Everlys. (Well,
Hank Williams did, but he was no pop singer, after all). Afterwards, there
would be plenty. Before, there was none. It is amusing that ‘Wake Up Little Susie’, the duo’s
second successful single, somewhat followed the formula — also written by the
Bryants, also based on an upbeat acoustic pattern, and also luring the
listener in a false direction with its opening chords (which play a
rock’n’roll pattern not unlike the main riff of Larry Williams’ ‘Slow Down’,
though actually it was the latter that was recorded about a week after the
Everlys’ single came out... coincidence?). But on the other hand, it is far
more melodically complex — there are at least three or four different vocal
melodies here, with a rather convoluted relationship between chorus, verse,
and bridge; and then there is the lyrical content, formally quite innocent
(the unlucky teens fall asleep while watching a movie) but provocative enough
in practice to have allegedly been banned on Boston radio sessions. The
Everlys were clean lads — they’d never
allow themselves to take advantage of poor little Susie, no sir! — but even
so, it makes sense to believe that the provocation was quite intentional.
After all, they were carried along
by the rock’n’roll spirit, even if they never wished to embrace rock’n’roll’s
stereotypes — if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be what they were, and I would
probably never even begin writing about them in the first place. By the time of the third single, the brothers felt
the need for even more change, and switched from the Bryants to Ray Charles:
‘This Little Girl Of Mine’ obediently submitted to the procedure of being
turned from jumpy, chaotic R&B to disciplined, apollonized pop — it even
opens with the same perfectly coordinated descending melodic line as Elvis’
‘Teddy Bear’. But unlike Elvis, the Everlys never allow themselves to become
«cuddly»: there is always something about those harmonies that has a
knife-like property, as if the very joining of their voices in two prevented
the arisal of overtly sappy sentimentality. It would truly take a very cruel
or a very ideologically zealous critic to accuse these rearrangements of
«bland whiteness» or anything of the sort. On the LP, they also do the same
thing to Ray’s ‘Leave My Woman Alone’, substituting the fast gospel chug of
the original for a slower, more even-paced pop-rock beat and country-based pop-rock
lead guitar lines that George Harrison would later master so well. In the end, there is not a weak number anywhere in
sight: original or cover, all these songs sound every bit as lively and
excited today as they did back in 1957. If you wish to think of
‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’ and the Ray Charles covers as filler, be my guest; I prefer
to think of this entire collection as the Everly Brothers putting their
unique spin on every piece of music floating around their personal space at
the time, and, subsequently, filler-free. Later records would have more
original compositions and, perhaps, more significant melodic breakthroughs,
but the major impact that the brothers made on the world merely by announcing
their presence in 1957 would never be outdone. Which is not that surprising,
given that their harmonies were
their major impact, and since it would be unimaginable to hear them improve
on the state of their harmonies here, what could they do to raise the stakes? Invent AutoTune? |
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TAUGHT US |
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Album
released: December 1958 |
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Tracks: 1) Roving Gambler; 2) Down In The
Willow Garden; 3) Long Time Gone; 4) Lightning Express; 5) That Silver Haired
Daddy Of Mine; 6) Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet; 7) Barbara Allen;
8) Oh So Many Years; 9) I’m Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail; 10) Rockin’
Alone In An Old Rockin’ Chair; 11) Kentucky; 12) Put My Little Shoes Away. |
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The
hits just kept coming for the Everly brothers throughout 1958 — ‘All I Have
To Do Is Dream’, ‘Bird Dog’, ‘Problems’ (we shall tackle these later) — so it
must have been quite a shock for the fans to see the duo’s second LP, instead
of predictably herding together their Bryant-penned pop-rock successes, stock
up on dusty old folk ballads, none of which had anything to do with the
rock’n’roll explosion or, let’s face it, the problems most relevant to the
contemporary late Fifties teenage heart. It is hardly surprising that the LP
became a commercial flop: much like Bob Dylan’s Self-Portrait twelve years later, this became a classic case of a
beloved artist intentionally disconnecting with their audiences. |
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Unlike Dylan, of course, Phil and Don Everly had no
particular reason to be pissed off at their audiences, and this gesture on
their part was most probably driven by positive rather than negative
emotions. They did, after all, have a fairly long history of singing
precisely this kind of music together with their parents, Ike and Margaret,
and their affection for more modern types of rock and pop music never came at
the expense of their admiration for the oldies — or for their old folks, for
that matter. So when they decided to take a twelve-song selection of old
Appalachian ballads and country waltzes and record them just as they are —
bare-bones, with just the brothers singing harmony over acoustic guitars —
this was most likely intended as a debt of gratitude to their parents (hence
the album title which is simply intended to tell the truth, rather than act
as some sort of symbolic defiance in the face of their teen audiences). It is
also quite possible that they may have entertained some hope that maybe, just
maybe some of their new fans from
the rock’n’roll generation would use this as a chance to be introduced to
some of the classic gems of the old folk tradition without inevitably
associating them with their boring old parents. If there was any such hope, it did not work: the
rock’n’roll fans of 1958 were not yet ready to be «duped» into trading their
blue suede shoes for old hiking boots. Nor would the album really have
appealed to the residents of Greenwich Village — with a few exceptions, the
songs selected by the brothers feel too mainstreamish, the musical and
lyrical relics of radio-friendly bourgeois entertainment from the pre-war
years rather than the stark naked, dark, bleeding, socially relevant folk,
blues, and gospel tunes delivered by the likes of Odetta or Dave Van Ronk. In
short, it is hard to imagine a proper market for this stuff in 1958 — I’m
sure Ike and Margaret must have been delighted by the humble gift, but who
else would be willing to spend one’s hard-earned cash on somebody else’s
loving family affair? Presumably, according to laws of the genre, this is
the point where I am expected to state just how much the album was ahead of
its time and just how much ungratefully unrecognized genius it contains. And
I would be happy to do it (because why not?), except for the sobering
realization that I have never been able to enjoy it in its entirety. Taken in small doses, the formula that Phil and
Don offer here is indeed sweet, touching, and even somewhat innovative for
its time — clean, crisp, confident acoustic guitar and unwavering, focused,
and caring twin harmonies, spreading love and respect all over the place. But
twelve old ballads in a row, delivered in the exact same style, exuding the
exact same mood, and generally rehashing the exact same two or three rhythmic
patterns and tempos, can easily wear out the patience of even a very patient
person. You might easily start out with the most emotional response ever to
‘Roving Gambler’ and find yourself in deep sleep — maybe even lethargic — by
the time ‘Put My Little Shoes Away’ pulls the plug on the experiment. This also makes it extremely difficult to comment on
individual selections, because you do not really want a review of such an
album to turn into actual discussions of what it is that makes ‘Barbara
Allen’ or ‘I’m Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail’ a great song (which they are,
don’t worry about it); you are more interested in what it is that the Everlys
bring out in their interpretations, and so far, I’ve been seriously stumped
getting past words like «tenderness» and «sentimentality». Even when they
boldly dare to include a creepy murder ballad (‘Down In The Willow Garden’,
which they probably learned from Charlie Monroe’s 1947 version), its
creepiness — undetectable until you scrutinize the lyrics — emerges only
because of the stark contrast between the horrible story and the emotional
compassion shown for the "dear little girl whose name was Rose
Connolly"; Phil and Don must have been the most gallantly romantic
couple of poisoners in the history of dark folk up to that moment (and, for
what it’s worth, their rendition of ‘Willow Garden’ must have contributed somewhat to the newly found popularity of
the murder ballad genre among more contemporary folk and pop singers). Note that there is no lack of disturbing or tragic
subjects in the duo’s other selections as well: themes of sin, desperation,
loneliness, imprisonment, old age, and death cover about 90% of the material
— I think ‘That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine’, probably intended specifically
as a gift for Ike, is the only song centered on mostly positive emotions (and
even then, its main motive is to "atone
to that silver haired daddy of mine", implying that you’ve really been a
bad boy here, too). From a certain point of view, the album could deserve the
epithet «gritty» — but, once again, it only works if you really get into the
lyrics of the songs; otherwise, the album might as well have been called Lullabies Our Daddy Put Us To Sleep With
(not that ‘Down In The Willow Garden’ wouldn’t have made a darn fine
lullaby). Ultimately, the album works well as a cultural
statement, and a serious potential influence on black-hearted mope-rock and
terminally depressed singer-songwriters all over the globe, but probably not
so well as a genuine emotional roller coaster that would keep you firmly in
its grip from start to finish. This is indirectly proven by the weird
circumstance of Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong and (not Green Day’s) Norah
Jones collaboratively remaking the entire album as Foreverly in 2013: the very fact that they did this proves the
record’s enduring cultural significance, but they also managed to make it
even more boring than it used to be, which kinda hints that it was not all that entertaining from the beginning,
either. It’s good to have it — had they just recorded one or two songs like
‘Willow Garden’ for a regular LP, they would almost certainly have been lost
among the bouncy, catchy, energetic pop hits — but it is also a safe bet that
most people would just rather listen to a best-of compilation of the brothers
from their glory years, and I wouldn’t have the nerve to blame these people. |
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Album
released: March 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) Bye Bye Love; 2) I Wonder If I
Care As Much; 3) Wake Up Little Susie; 4) Maybe Tomorrow; 5) Should We Tell
Him; 6) This Little Girl Of Mine; 7) All I Have To Do
Is Dream; 8) Claudette; 9) Bird Dog;
10) Devoted To You; 11) Problems; 12) Love Of My Life. |
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REVIEW
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Instead of giving in to Bleyer’s repugnant
commercial strategy which forced poor American families to shell out extra
cash for stuff they already owned (a widespread practice for the 1960s, but
not yet fully endorsed by the majority of labels in the 1950s, because live
and learn), we shall construct our own Best
Of The Everly Brothers by simply focusing on the chronology of their
singles from March 1958 to the end of their Cadence period, conflating the
«new» songs of this record with the rest of them on The Fabulous Style; in practical terms, this hardly matters since
you will probably just be listening to them all on one of the miriads of
later Everly compilations, too numerous to mention — just be sure that they
have all these tracks on them, because the brothers were on a solid roll at
the time, and pretty much all of their Cadence era stuff is at least worth
your ears, if not necessarily your total devotion. Anyway, March ’58 does represent a significant
milestone for the boys, with the release of ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’. All
of their previous singles were fairly lightweight, guided by either comical
overtones (‘Wake Up Little Susie’) or toe-tapping bitter irony (‘Bye Bye
Love’) — but here was a slow, courteous, gorgeous, dreamy ballad with an
almost royal arrangement, as Chet Atkins himself joins the boys with an
exquisite electric lead guitar part, using tremolo chords to emphasize the
«dreamy» atmosphere of this poor little lament about the happiness lying just
outside one’s reach. The historical role of the song can hardly be
overestimated: it is one of the earliest representatives of what we can call
«lush pop» or «baroque pop», and there’s a fairly straight connection from
here to everything from the Beach Boys to the Left Banke and beyond. Yet it
is also quite markedly a «teenage symphony» — the Bryants, who wrote the song
as usual, couldn’t help marking this on the bridge section with the
unforgettable lines of "only trouble is — gee whiz", as if they meant it for the soundtrack of Leave It To Beaver or something. In any case, this is the song that forever sealed
the fate of the Everly Brothers, much like ‘My Generation’ did it for the Who
or ‘Satisfaction’ did it for the Stones. Next to it, the B-side, a cover of
Roy Orbison’s ‘Claudette’, despite being far superior to Roy’s own early version
on Sun Records, already looks almost anachronistic — fast, bouncy, funny,
totally in the style of ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ or ‘This Little Girl Of Mine’,
two minutes of simple, unsophisticated joy best summarized in the frantic
acoustic strum on the breaks between verses. But the contrast is fun when you
just think of it in terms of a flipped-over 7-inch record — one side for the
spirit, one for the body. Oddly enough, the duo’s next single reversed the
principle: the danceable joke song (‘Bird Dog’) was the A-side, while the
gorgeous ballad (‘Devoted To You’) was the B-side — although this might have
been made by mistake, since subsequent releases would swap the sides, and
both songs ultimately made the charts on their own. From a comparative
perspective, ‘Devoted To You’, while still beautifully sung and melodically
memorable, is a little less impressive than ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’ — a
bit less sophisticated chord-wise, a bit more folksy, and that same tremolo
guitar only appears at the beginning and end of the song for some reason, as
if it were just an obligatory stylistic nod to the previous hit. ‘Bird Dog’, on the other hand, is a far more
attractive musical and lyrical journey than ‘Claudette’ if you’re looking for
more joke material — essentially, it is Boudleaux Bryant’s attempt to write
something in the style of the Coasters, as the call-and-response vocals all
but beg for the vocal treatment of
the greatest jokers in R&B history, though, admittedly, the Everlys do an
okay job themselves with the high pitch on the "he’s a bird" and
the low pitch on the "he’s a dog" lines. (All that’s lacking is
some yakety sax from King Curtis to complete the picture). Apparently
(judging by some comments I encountered), 21st century sensitivity has made
the song feel somewhat ostracized (songs about two guys fighting about a
girl’s attention don’t really cut it anymore), but if we are obliged to
relegate all the "Leave-My-Woman-Alone" type songs to the dustbin
of history, that’ll leave the shelves pretty bare, I guess. I do admire the
"Johnny kissed the teacher / He tiptoed up to reach her" bit,
anyway — that’s yet another bit of provocative daring on Bryant’s part, even
if he cleverly indemnifies himself and
Johnny in the next lines ("well he’s the teacher’s pet now, what he
wants he’s been gettin’ now, he even made the teacher let him sit next to my
baby"). And that was almost twenty years before ABBA! Pressing on, we reach ‘Problems’ (October ’58),
which is largely like a thematic follow-up to ‘Bird Dog’ — with «Johnny» out
of the picture, the teenage protagonist switches the psychological focus back
on himself, complaining that "my love life just ain’t swingin’ like it
should", whatever that would
specifically mean at the time. This ain’t exactly a Chuck Berry level of psychological
manipulation, but then Chuck never focused all that much on the negative
aspect of things — to him, everything could be quickly cured by
"dropping the coin right into the slot" of the nearest juke joint,
which probably makes ‘Problems’ a
bit more relevant for Gen Z ("worries, worries pile up on my
head"). Musically, though, the single greatest thing about the song is
the gracefully nagging little country guitar line that somebody (possibly
Chet Atkins again) plays at the end of each verse line. It’s like a little
musical joke and a bit of musical teasing at the same time. Good for all
those who have "problems, problems all day long" — the song will
cheer you up and empathize with you. The B-side was ‘Love Of My Life’, repeating the «one
joke song, one serious song» pattern; again, like ‘Devoted To You’, not quite
up to the standard of ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’, but I appreciate the jumpy
acoustic rhythm (with a little Mexican twang to it, right?), though the
overall chord structure seems to be largely re-writing Buddy Holly’s ‘Listen
To Me’ from earlier in the year — on the other hand, listen closely and you
will hear those "I love you-oo-oo, oo-oo" harmonies directly reproduced in the Beatles’
‘Hold Me Tight’ (heh, and now at last I have objective proof that there was something distinctly dilettantish
about my least favorite song on With
The Beatles). This is as far as The Everly Brothers’ Best, released in March 1959, takes us, but
let us continue our little walk in the Everly park for the rest of 1959,
shall we? From the very same month, we have ‘Take A Message To Mary’, another
Bryant original which may have actually been inspired by Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, since it is uncharacteristically
written in the similar style of an old jailhouse ballad. Now you may laugh at
me if you wish, but I actually like the original a lot less than Bob Dylan’s
cover from the infamous Self-Portrait
— not only does Bob correct the obvious melodic incongruency of the verbal
stress by turning "take a message to MA-ry" into the rhythmically
more adequate "take a message to Ma-RIE" (and why couldn’t our poor
hero’s sweetheart be French, after all?), but his rougher, more electrified
version would actually give the song a bit of the required «frontier feel».
When the Everlys sing the song, it feels like they are doing it from some
lush boudoir rather than a jail cell — and I have always felt more sympathy
for the plight of Dylan’s protagonist rather than Phil and Don’s. Still, this is where it all began, and it is
nice to know that the Bryants could adapt their songwriting quite
professionally and comfortably to suit the current artistic inclinations of
their principal clients. The B-side was also a jailhouse song, but quite a
different one — the «joke» side of the single was ‘Poor Jenny’, another
little provocative number, in which the protagonist’s sweetheart gets
accidentally mistaken for the "leader of a teenage gang" after
being knocked out in a drunken brawl, and locked up as a result. It’s one of
their catchiest and silliest numbers, unless you want to read a misogynistic
streak into it, in which case it’s also one of their most offensive, but hey,
accidents happen. Sometimes it’s a stagecoach and a shot from a careless gun,
sometimes it’s a party last night when some joker goes and calls the cops on
the phone. If the Everly Brothers ever wanted to release an album called Songs About Stupid People, both parts
of the single could easily be chosen as side openers. In July 1959, the Bryant-dominated streak was
finally interrupted with one of Don Everly’s own compositions: ‘(’Til) I
Kissed You’, a song that would, for some reason, later become a staple for
various reggae artists (go figure just how they sniffed out its reggae
potential). Musically and lyrically, you can sort of see why they preferred
to rely on the far more sophisticated Bryant material in that period — but
even with its simple chords and trivial lyrics, the song gets the job done if
all you want to express is that one particular feeling. The nicest touch is
arguably the pompous tom-tom roll after each of the "I kissed you"
bits, as executed by Jerry Allison, drummer of the Crickets (who, after
Buddy’s death, would occasionally back the Everlys in the studio and on
tour). The same tom-toms sound less exciting on the B-side, though: ‘Oh, What
A Feeling’, also written by Don, is a slow, stiff, and somewhat dreary waltz
which lacks the finesse of the Bryants’ ballads and seems to be rarely
remembered for a good reason. Finally, we close out 1959 with a sappy, string-drenched
version of the French chanson ‘Je T’Appartiens’, translated into English as
‘Let It Be Me’ and popularized by the Everlys for the Christmas season. Now
you may laugh at me again if you
wish, but I actually like this version a lot less than... right, you guessed
it, Bob Dylan’s cover from the infamous Self-Portrait,
which kinda sorta works around the song’s sentimental corniness and the
ruffled shirtsleeves of the Everlys’ delivery. Maybe if it weren’t for the
Mantovani-style strings, I could have taken this easier, but as it is, ‘Let
It Be Me’ is the first grossly overproduced item in the brothers’ catalog —
probably not coincidental with the fact that it was also their first song to
be recorded in New York rather than Nashville. I am much more partial to the
B-side, ‘Since You Broke My Heart’, another of Don’s «originals» (actually a
minor variation, I think, on one of the old Hank Williams melodies), which
cleverly combines Buddy Holly’s rhythm guitar style with a moody bluesy lead
line (which goes along well with the "they say the blues went out of
style" line) and even more of those tom-toms. Since we shall probably not be returning to the
band’s Cadence years, I suppose at least a quick mention should be also made
of their last singles for the label, issued already after the Everlys’
defection to Warner Bros. ‘When Will I Be Loved’ is a Phil composition, very
deceptively beginning with the same defiant blues-rock chords that open Bo
Diddley’s ‘I’m A Man’: the opening eight seconds, featuring that aggressive
riff followed by a harmonica blast, will make it seem like the Everlys
decided to move to Chicago for a bit, but once the vocal harmonies come in, things
get back to more comfy territory — this is your everyday male insecurity they
are singing about after all, not your everyday male self-confidence. And at
least this version is much better than the later hit cover by Linda Ronstadt
(because early Sixties’ country-rock musical clichés just happen to be
less annoying than mid-Seventies’ country-rock ones). Finally, we return back into the caring arms of the
Bryants with ‘Like Strangers’ and ‘Brand New Heartache’, but I feel like this
last single for Cadence was a bit of a dud — unlike most of the previous
ones, it did not even manage to crack the Top 20, and this is because the
A-side is very much just a pretty lullaby with a poorly defined hook. The
duet between the acoustic guitar and the softly muffled electric slide chords
is aesthetically pleasing, but «yawny», and the brothers’ harmonies just flow
smoothly across the valley without scaling any interesting peaks. Meanwhile,
‘Brand New Heartache’ is just a generic country throwaway (essentially the
same song as Carl Perkins’ ‘Sure To Fall In Love With You’, only without the
latter’s humorous twist) — and furthermore, with its presence the single
finally commits the unforgivable crime of not following the «gorgeous ballad
/ joke song» pattern of all those previous Bryant-penned singles. Well,
that’s what you get for releasing singles for your artists when they are no
longer with you. And with this, we conclude our evaluation of the
Everlys’ years at Cadence — years during which, as you can see, they had far
more triumphs than duds, a situation that would not be continued quite as
smoothly with their years on Warner Bros. (and is, in fact, somewhat
reminiscent of the correlation between Elvis’ years at Sun and at RCA).
While, perhaps, not 100% consistent (but what is?), this might have been one
of the most important consecutive runs of singles in the history of «lush
pop», «art pop», «folk pop», «baroque pop», or whatever else you might want
to call commercially-oriented pop music with retro-oriented artistic
inclinations. In those years, probably only Buddy Holly could have been a
worthy competitor to the unstoppable combination of the Bryants’ songwriting
talents and the Everlys’ performing skills — and after «the day the music
died», he’d have a bit of a hard time making the general public aware of his
latest progress. |
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Tracks: 1) So Sad;
2) Just In Case; 3) Memories Are Made Of This; 4) That’s What You Do To Me;
5) Sleepless Nights; 6) What Kind Of Girl Are You; 7) Oh, True Love; 8) Carol
Jane; 9) Some Sweet Day; 10) Nashville Blues; 11) You Thrill Me; 12) I Want
You To Know. |
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A
new decade, a new (and much bigger) record label with (probably) a far more
lucrative record contract, and, perhaps most importantly for the purposes of
this retrospective, a new approach to the idea of a long-playing record. All
their LPs on Cadence were just compilations of singles, with the notable
exception of Songs Our Daddy Taught Us
which must have been envisioned as sort of a «side project» anyway, a
«special side» of the Everlys that would only appeal to the devoted fan with
a special bank account for buying up everything Phil-and-Don-related. But the
times they were a-changin’, and you didn’t even need to have Bob Dylan and
the Beatles around you to let you know that as of 1960, LPs were finally
supposed to mean so much more than they used to. |
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This certainly does not imply that the Everly
Brothers, or anybody else for that matter, turned into an «album-oriented»
artistic persona overnight. On the contrary, their very first release for
Warner Bros. was a single — and a single none other than the famous ‘Cathy’s
Clown’, to let the whole world know that the transition from a smaller to a
larger record label has not impacted the brothers’ ear for melody and harmony
one single bit. We shall come back to this song later (since it would be
included on their second LP for Warner); for now, it just makes sense to note
that this smash hit — alas, also the last ever #1 they would put on the US
charts — was not followed up by another single, but by a full LP of new
material, not a single song on which was a previously released single. It’s Everly Time indeed, baby! Not that I could or would argue that It’s Everly Time! marks the brothers’
transformation into «album-oriented artists», or that each and every song on
here deserves your full and undivided attention in the same way that their
best singles do. Few, if any, titles from here seem to be generally
remembered and cherished as individual highlights, and, indeed, the hooks and
tugs tend to be subtle throughout — nothing on the level of "DON’T WANT YOUR LO-O-O-OVE..." to
kick you right out of bed and make you want to climb Mount Everest, or at
least do your homework properly. But each and every song, even including the
seemingly superfluous Ray Charles and Fats Domino covers, has something to
say; each one has a little bit of heart and a little bit of brain to at least
tempt you to come back and re-assess it once the album’s over — and since the
album’s over in a flash (barely running over 25 minutes), you can easily fit
two listens in the same time you’ll have to allocate for, say, a Highway 61 Revisited, allowing you to
develop an understanding of the Everly Brothers that runs twice as deep as
your understanding of Bob Dylan — so there! Only one song on the album was written by Don Everly
in person: ‘So Sad (To Watch Good Love Bad)’ — and it’s probably the one most
people are familiar with, since it would be released as a single post-factum
and frequently played in concert. Country artists like to cover it since it
is one of their most Nashville-sounding tear-jerkers, starting off slow and
plaintively like a Hank Williams number would do, but, naturally, that third
line on which the brothers come together and make their pole jump high up in
the air ("it makes me cry... to
see love die") would be way outside Hank’s reach. The song never
seriously advances beyond the punch of that third line, but it’s a solid
enough punch to last you for two and a half minutes. More importantly, it’s
probably the brothers’ most «mature-sounding» breakup song recorded up to
date — this is not necessarily a good sign, because all too often «maturity»
is embraced as a value onto itself, but there’s enough dynamics here to make
your journey through the bottom of the ocean bumpy enough, so it works; and now
we know that the Everlys can truly be the Twin Kings of Melancholy if they
want to, rather than merely the Kings of Sweet Romanticism. It’s interesting to compare the song with the
ever-reliable Bryant duo’s take on the same vibe: ‘Sleepless Nights’ is a
tender, whiny, almost «sissy» ballad which merely has the protagonist crying
into his pillow (we never really get to know why his girl left him in the
first place — penis size problems?), whereas ‘So Sad’ is a subtle attempt at
tackling the serious problem of feelings that simply fizzle out with time.
That’s not meant to diminish the compositional skill of ‘Sleepless Nights’,
whose oddly woven structure, without a very clear demarcating line between
the verses, brings on associations with the Beatles’ ‘If I Fell’ — and some
of whose chords bring on to mind Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Sounds Of Silence’.
But in terms of emotional depth, this is a good example of how the brothers’
own songwriting was slowly gaining the upper hand on their loyal songwriting
courtiers. Some of the songs the Bryants contribute here
continue to be (at least lyrically) oriented at the horny teenage market,
which is not really such a bad thing for 1960, the year when music industry
would really try to push its cash
cows in the direction of the middle-aged housewife market. ‘Just In Case’
sounds like something fresh out of 1957, a nice little pop-rock riff set to a
groovy tempo, as if «nudging» the girl to accept that "baby now’s the time to give your heart,
just in case we have to part" (the "heart", of course, being a valiant metaphor for quite a
different part of the female anatomy). Its placement right next to ‘So Sad’
is almost comical, given that the emotional distance between the two is
comparable to the emotional distance between the Beatles circa 1964 and 1969;
but if you re-arrange the track list so that the album opens with ‘Just In Case’ and closes
with ‘So Sad’ — hey, you got yourself a David
Copperfield of a rock opera! The rest of the Bryants’ work here is generally not
as attention-grabbing, but the (moderately) fresh hooks still emerge upon a
couple of listens — for instance, the grumbly shuffling tempo of ‘Oh, True
Love’ might feel a little boring, but just wait until the vocal ascension in
the bridge section ("baby you’re great,
baby you’re keen, baby all of my friends are just about green"),
giving the song quite an epic feel. Ballads like ‘Some Sweet Day’ and ‘You
Thrill Me’ are merely catchy, without that much to say; and the odd one out
really is ‘Nashville Blues’, a song that is actually bluesy — at least the intro, with that stinging guitar
that’s almost more Chicago than Nashville, prepares you for a blues number,
before the song crosses over into country-pop. It’s a fairly weird creation,
a mix of styles and moods that absolutely nobody remembers from the Everlys
but which is definitely a stand-out track on this album, even if one might
hesitate to call it a «highlight». The non-Bryant cover material on the record is
nothing to particularly revere, but everything sounds nice. A couple of
Crickets’ members contribute the pleasant Buddy Holly tribute ‘That’s What
You Do To Me’, just to show the world what a Buddy Holly-type song sounds
like in the hands of the Everlys (pretty good, but I do miss Buddy’s hiccups).
Ray Charles’ ‘What Kind Of Girl Are You’ is just the kind of Ray Charles song
that Phil and Don can convert to their own purposes (perhaps because in Ray’s
own version it was actually called ‘What Kind Of Man Are You’ and sung by
Mary Ann Fisher, rather than Ray himself). ‘Carol Jane’, contributed by a
little known Kentucky-born singer called Dave Rich, is a sweet little boppy
tune where the playful bass riff matters almost as much as all the
harmonizing; once again, the brothers totally wash away the border between
«country» and «pop», not to mention how they are always coming up with new
ideas on where to direct their harmonies even on trifles such as these.
Listen to how the opening "Carol,
Carol, Carol Jane...", chanted in unison, then splits apart into a
supportive vibrating vocalize from one voice and the main vocal melody from
the other one; just a small extra touch, for sure, but also a perfect
illustration of how the brothers were never content with merely
double-tracking their harmonies — an impatient, experimental mindset that
would be inherited by all the great harmonizers of the pop world to come,
from the Beatles to the Beach Boys to Simon and Garfunkel and others. Even such obvious filler as a cover of Fats Domino’s
‘I Want You To Know’, when you give the recording a true chance, eventually
begins to make sense. Why should the Everly Brothers be covering Fats Domino?
But then I gave the
original a spin and yes, it’s a fine Fats groove but... doesn’t that
vocal sound just a tad too thin for
this kind of song? Doesn’t it sound like the kind of groove that could profit
from a tougher, tighter, more melodic vocal arrangement? Okay, maybe you
think that it doesn’t; but even so, it is perfectly legitimate to ask that
question and try out that approach. And for the Everlys, it actually makes
more sense than covering ‘Ready Teddy’, because ‘Ready Teddy’ is a kick-ass
rock’n’roll number which has little use for a different, softer vibe — but ‘I
Want You To Know’ is a tender love song at heart, and they do it just as much
justice, in their own brotherly way, as Fats does. Yes, a trifle, but a
working trifle at that. In short, even if absolutely nothing off this record
ever ends up on best-of collections, with the possible exception of ‘So Sad’,
this is still no excuse to avoid it. The brothers were at the peak of their
creative powers in that era, and one of the very few American acts who could
put out an entire (if still drastically short) LP of material that could be
relatively unassuming and still perfectly tasteful and enjoyable from top to
bottom. And indeed, one might think that with most of the classic rock and
roll heroes of the 1950s either dead or «invalidated» by 1960, it was truly Everly Time! — no swooping strings,
no crooning, no faking, just a healthy mix of rock, pop, country, and folk
influences with some of the most inventive vocal harmonies to go around. Too
bad it didn’t last all that long. |
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A DATE
WITH THE EVERLY BROTHERS |
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Tracks: 1) Made To Love; 2) That’s Just
Too Much; 3) Stick With Me Baby; 4) Baby What You
Want Me To Do; 5) Sigh, Cry, Almost Die; 6) Always It’s You; 7) Love Hurts; 8) Lucille; 9) So How Come (No One Loves
Me); 10) Donna, Donna; 11) A Change Of Heart; 12) Cathy’s
Clown. |
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It
is a bit odd that Warner Bros. decided to hold off re-releasing their latest
acquisition’s hottest single until their second
LP for the label — in fact, what with its humble position at the very end of
the record, it’s almost as if ‘Cathy’s Clown’ were included on it at the last
minute to fill up space and round the number of songs to the typical 12
tracks on a US LP. But better late than never, and it’s not as if the song felt
completely out of place when taken out on A Date With The Everly Brothers. It does have its unique
properties, but they would only have made it feel special on any Everly Brothers LP ever released. |
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The funny thing is, when thinking about the commonly
stated influence of ‘Cathy’s Clown’ on the Beatles — most notably by way of its loud,
up-and-down-the-scale double vocal harmonies that were appropriated for
‘Please Please Me’ and then prominently featured in most of the Beatles’
early hit singles — I cannot get rid of the idea of one of those «accidental
breakthroughs», like Dave Davies’ bad amp or Tony Iommi’s cut-off fingertips,
that sometimes result in new pathways opening up for the development of
musical ideas. This is probably because those harmonies as used by the
Beatles are typically used to express the most natural kind of emotion — a
sort of triumphant exuberance, which becomes totally associated with the song
even if the lyrics might suggest a different reading (after all, isn’t
‘Please Please Me’ really about a guy expressing acute concern over his girl
hesitating to give him a blowjob?). But in ‘Cathy’s Clown’, there seems to be a genuine
dissonance between intent and result. The song intentionally starts
out like a resolute, powerful military march, with the appropriate drum fills
and all — the protagonist is determined to make a stand — and then in come
the vocals that were probably meant
to sound defiant, if not downright menacing, but instead... somehow end up
giving out a totally positive, if not downright loving, vibe in the end.
Looking at the lyrics, you’d think the song should have been sung in a
Lennon-tone à la ‘You Can’t
Do That’ ("I’m gonna let you down and leave you flat, BITCH!"), yet Phil and Don,
natural-born sissies as they are, simply cannot adress a girl with lead or
venom on their minds, so the «stand» against being cheated upon and
humiliated in public quickly becomes a submissive plea. In the process, a new
style of singing is born — the «rock-anger-turned-pop-exuberance» style. Of
course, it’s just one of many different possible takes on what makes the song
special, but special it is — as was clearly felt by trans-Atlantic audiences
at the time, who sent it to the top of the charts both in the US and in the
UK, only the second time the Everlys achieved this after ‘All I Have To Do Is
Dream’... and the very last one. What feels strange to me is that the brothers
clearly must have known they were onto something different here. Look at the
song’s construction — it’s got a 32-second verse-cum-chorus repeated thrice in the exact same manner, with
absolutely no variations or distractions, and only a tiny 16-second long
bridge repeated twice in between
the choruses. This means they were so thrilled with that harmonic style that
they were absolutely sure the public would be just as thrilled with them
hammering it down their throats, take after take, and that’s exactly what
happened. However, as their recordings both in 1960 and over the following
years show, they were quite reluctant to expand with that «triumphant
harmony» style — as if patiently waiting for the Beatles to come and take it
over, with ‘Please Please Me’ followed by ‘From Me To You’, ‘She Loves You’,
‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, etc. etc. Meanwhile, they themselves would decide
to hold back and hone the «softer» side of their craft with songs like ‘So
Sad’, ‘Walk Right Back’, etc. How often does one break one’s way inside a
hidden gold mine, only to pick up a single nugget and walk away, mumbling
"oh, I’m no good at gold-digging
anyway, I’d rather some younger whippersnapper came along and finished this
for me?" With a little extra push, Phil and Don might have been the
Beatles... instead, they ended up sort of becoming Cathy’s clowns, as
insensitive as that sounds. Not that this is reason for emotional devastation or
anything, because on the whole, A Date
With The Everly Brothers is no more or less consistent than their first
LP for Warners, and because it is always best to let artists wallow in the
groove they feel is naturally best for them. (It is, in fact, quite possible
that the brothers intentionally followed ‘Cathy’s Clown’ up with the much
more soft and subdued ‘So Sad’ because they were afraid of this new style
initiating some sort of «Everlymania» which they could never have handled as
well as the Fab Four). Despite the changing times, the brothers still
persist in trying to put their own stamp on blues-rock and rock’n’roll, as
seen from their covers of Jimmy Reed’s ‘Baby What You Want Me To Do’ and
Little Richard’s ‘Lucille’ — the former being very much a waste of tape
(really, the song only works with Jimmy’s own minimalistic vibe, trying to
put a classy Nashville touch on it only spoils the effect), and the latter
actually sounding a little weird,
as the brothers draw out Little Richard’s short vocal outbursts to
near-baroque lengths, attempting to stress the song’s romantically wistful
potential. There’s even an almost psychedelic little pause before the
instrumental sections, marked only by a desperate "ohhhhhh..." and a distant-thunder-on-the-mountain drum fill,
which, for a tiny bit, makes it feel like the song is melting down right
before our eyes, though it quickly patches itself up again. It is still a
failure on the whole, because ‘Lucille’ is one of those songs that really
does not gain anything from any attempts at innovative terraforming, and
generally, I suppose, the Everlys just needed to throw a clearly marked bone
to their old fans from the rock’n’roll era, but hey, at least it actually
gives you something to write about. (I mean, most people don’t even notice that meaningful pause!). The rest of the tracks are more or less equally
divided into those self-penned by Phil and Don and those contributed by the
Bryants (only one other track, ‘Stick With Me Baby’, was contributed by Mel
Tillis, at that time more of a songwriter for country artists than a hitmaker
for himself — and there’s really nothing special about it, either). Not
surprisingly, the Bryants still win: other than the lucky fluke of ‘Cathy’s
Clown’ (for which Don eventually took all the credit after a series of legal
battles in the 2010s), the Everly originals on Side A of the LP are
stylistically pleasant rather than hooky — the only exception is the opening
number, ‘Made To Love’, which you might remember — or take my advice and
memorize — for the proto-Mötley Crüe chorus of "Girls! Girls! Girls!", except
that the action does not take place in a strip bar, but rather in a plain
old-fashioned household where the Everlys’ father is taking them aside for a
little birds-and-bees talk. It’s really just a funny trifle, with a Buddy
Holly-style chorus married to a more surf-like verse style, possibly more
suited to the likes of Jan & Dean than a «mature» duo like the Everlys,
but it’s kinda funny how the album begins with ‘Made To Love’, introducing
the protagonist to his upcoming struggles with the opposite sex, and ends
with ‘Cathy’s Clown’, showing how easy it is to fuck things up with "that special girl who’ll sweep you off
your feet". Perhaps the «trifle» is strategically placed, after all
— A Date With The Everly Brothers
is hardly what we’d call a concept album, but it does run the full gamut of
all conceivable emotional states that have to do with male-female
relationships, at least up until the age of 20 or so. The songs that people will recognize more easily, or
at least identify with more easily, are, I think, mostly on the second side
of the album. This is where you will find the catchy pop nugget ‘So How Come
(No One Loves Me)’, which the Beatles would later take with them to their BBC sessions,
although their harmonies did not really stand a chance against the cleaner,
more delicate and expressive Phil-and-Don duo — definitely not in a
spontaneous live environment, at least. My only problem with the song is that
its depressive lyrics, with which I’m quite liable to identify at times
("if you wonder who the loneliest
creatures in the world can be / they’re the ugly duckling, the little black
sheep and me" is pure Bryant Brilliance!), do not form a perfect
match with the sprightly tempo; without the lyrics, this is just a quirky,
catchy little pop-rock number, childlishly seductive in atmosphere rather
than properly melancholic. Another song that may have subconsciously influenced
the Beatles is ‘Always It’s You’, the B-side to ‘Cathy’s Clown’; I think it
is possible to directly trace Paul’s "it’s you... you, you you"
chorus in ‘Hold Me Tight’ to the "it’s you, always it’s you" chorus
here, although, much to the Beatles’ honor, their melodic connections to the
Everlys, like most of their other influences as well, were in terms of
chord-borrowing rather than outright melody-stealing. Of course, the main
difference is that the Everlys lay down their vocal melodies subtly, with
thin, delicate brush strokes, compared to the Beatles’ broad, pushier
approach (I think it wasn’t until ‘Here, There And Everywhere’ that Paul
finally mastered that gentle-sensitive touch) — which, for the good of us
all, places them in what we could call complementary emotional distribution. Sometimes, though, «thin and delicate» definitely
works better for me than any kind of embellishment, and I am, of course,
speaking of ‘Love Hurts’, the ballad that the Everlys, for technical reasons,
could not release as a single and had to tolerate their (anti-)thunder stolen
first by Roy Orbison, and then, more than a decade later, by Nazareth. With
all due love and respect for Roy’s golden timbre, and only slightly less so for
the recently departed Dan McCafferty, I think that it is the quiet,
minimalistic delivery of the Everlys that shall forever remain the «default»
version of the song for me. The reason is that both Roy and Dan want to show
me explicitly just how much "love
hurts" — Roy gallantly putting his heart on his sleeve like a medieval
court minstrel and Dan ripping it out like a hyper-emotional Italian opera
singer. Meanwhile, the Everlys hit all the right notes without overstating
their case. That thin, wavery vibrato running through their voices during the
verses is really all it takes for me to get the tragic message of the song.
(And I don’t much care for the cheesy strings on the Roy Orbison version —
although, admittedly, I wouldn’t mind an exquisite guitar solo like Manny
Charlton’s on top of Phil and Don’s vocal delivery; I think that it captured
the true spirit of the song better in the Nazareth version than McCafferty’s
overblown vocals). Overall, now that I look back at the track listing,
‘Cathy’s Clown’ and ‘Love Hurts’ are the only clear stand-outs, but of the
remaining selection, it is only the Jimmy Reed cover that I find impossible
to enjoy. Even those tracks which completely conform to the definition of
«filler» — ‘A Change Of Heart’, for instance, a 100% generic Hank Williams
imitation if there ever was one — have their atmospheric charm, with tasteful
guitars, colorful pianos, and beautiful harmonies. It would have been the
simplest of things to spoil the classic Everly Brothers sound in 1960, turning
their art into orchestrated pap for easy listening, but, fortunately, nobody
had the bad taste to spoil a good formula... not yet, at least. |
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Tracks: 1) My Mammy; 2) Muskrat; 3) My Gal Sal; 4) Grandfather’s Clock; 5)
Bully Of The Town; 6) Chlo-E; 7) Mention My Name In Sheboygan; 8) Hi-Lili,
Hi-Lo; 9) Wayward Wind; 10) Don’t Blame Me; 11) Now Is The Hour; 12) Little
Old Lady; 13) When I Grow Too Old To Dream; 14) Love Is Where You Find It. |
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How
Music Row & Acuff-Rose Killed The Everly Brothers, goes the
title of a Web publication retelling the story of how Phil and Don Everly
parted ways with their publisher, Wesley Rose, and how this rift almost
instantaneously turned their diamond carriage back into a pumpkin. Details
might be found over at that source, or a couple thousand other biographical
write-ups; all that matters to us is that, due to a clash of personalities
and the inherent imperfection of certain capitalist practices, by 1961 The
Everly Brothers were cut off not only from the services of their most loyal
and reliable court songwriters (the Bryants), but even from their own services, deprived of the right to
publish and record songs they wrote themselves. |
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Would things have been significantly different, had
their relationship with Acuff-Rose Music been somehow salvaged? I would
hesitate to offer an opinion — on one hand, it is true that the Bryants and
the Everlys wrote some of the best pop songs on the market during that short
late Fifties / early Sixties interval when rock’n’roll was in decline, and
that the strong influence of that brilliant stretch on the soon-to-follow
British Invasion bands is undeniable; with the brothers effectively shot down
in mid-air (or, if you want to take the industry’s side in this quarrel,
effectively shooting themselves in the foot), they might have missed a real
chance to «graduate» as the duo that led America’s pop music to some of its
greatest artistic heights. On the other hand, we also have quite a few cases
of talented American pop artists from the same time period who, despite not
having experienced the same problems, were still unable to properly hold
their ground against the tidal wave of the new generation — from Roy Orbison
to Del Shannon and the like, they either faded away or had to remain
satisfied with some sort of «secondary» status in terms of fame and fortune. In the end, it was probably more of a deep personal
tragedy than a global impact kind of event: what would you feel if you were an aspiring songwriter, content, perhaps, to
work within the relatively permissive framework of a specific genre such as
«country-tinged pop», but still interested in expanding the limits of its
musical language — and then found yourself unable to pursue that dream
through some absurd legal decision? In a way, it’s a wonder that The Everly
Brothers still remained in the musical profession at all, let alone continued
to make their own records and still try to find new ways in which to express
and develop themselves. Lots of other people would just screw it all and go
into real estate instead, or start selling fine leather jackets. Not Phil and
Don, for whom music meant everything. Well, music and amphetamines, to be more accurate — but that’s, like, two
sides of the same coin anyway. Anyway, nothing predicted a thunderstorm on the
horizon as 1961 swept away 1960 and brought the brothers yet another success
with ‘Ebony Eyes’ and ‘Walk Right Back’, two equally popular sides of the
same single that briefly pushed them back into the Top 10 after the
(relative) letdown of ‘Like Strangers’. Frankly speaking, John D.
Loudermilk’s ‘Ebony Eyes’ is fairly maudlin — a pretty, but somewhat
artificial tear-jerker, one of those unlucky ballads that, musically, sound
like a gentle sentimental under-the-balcony serenade but spoil it all with
Terribly Tragic Lyrics (this time, the protagonist’s love interest dies in a
plane crash), and that’s not even mentioning the corny spoken-word interlude
in the middle. It doesn’t help matters much, either, that the chords and
harmonies in the intro are taken almost directly from the intro to Elvis’
‘It’s Now Or Never’ — a song that, whether you like it or not, was at least a
perfectly adequate representative of the «romantic-candlelight-prelude-to-a-night-of-passion»
genre. Here, though, it’s like quenching animal passion with a brutally cold
shower. ‘Walk Right Back’, on the other hand, is a terrific
little pop song that the Everlys took off the hands of Sonny Curtis, who was
at his songwriting peak at the time (‘I Fought The Law’, ‘More Than I Can
Say’, etc.). The simple, shuffling acoustic riff is one of those atmospheric
nonchalant-walk-in-the-park-on-a-sunny-day creations, yet its embedded minor
chords leave some space for melancholy, which makes the lyrics — once again,
about separation, loneliness, and yearning — feel much more at home with the
melody than they do on ‘Ebony Eyes’. The song’s main hook is when the gentle
country-pop shuffle briefly gives way to a near-military march on the "bring your love to me this minute!"
bit, a subtle and clever mood swing that grabs your attention if it had been
previously lost due to the softness of the song — then, for the ultimate
resolution, cuts off the violence once again and drops back into purring
summer day melancholy. Not a bad match at all, Sonny Curtis with The Everly
Brothers. Then came the crash — and, strangest of all, over
what? A recording of ‘Temptation’, a rusty oldie from the golden days of Bing
Crosby that, ironically, had originally been produced (way back in 1933) by
Wesley Rose, but whose publishing rights did not belong to him. It was
old-fashioned, a little cheesy, a bit difficult to properly modernize, yet,
for some reason, Phil and Don liked it so much (allegedly, a vision of Don
rearranging Bing Crosby’s version came to him in a frickin’ dream) that they sacrificed their
relations with their own publishing firm to get it out on the market. It did
go on to top the UK charts, but was far less successful in the US, and,
frankly, it’s not the kind of song over which I’d personally go to battle
with the system. Maybe it was just a pretext, though, for the brothers to
fight their own little war of independence — which, for the moment, resulted
in being cut off from recording any songs by their own major songwriters,
including themselves... and meanwhile, their new record label was impatiently
awaiting loads of material for their next LP. This is an important angle from which to approach Both Sides Of An Evening. The fact
that no songs on it are credited to either the Bryants or the Everlys is
immediately obvious, but it takes a bit more effort to realize that no songs
on it are credited to any contemporary songwriters, period — it’s all folk, country, and Tin Pan Alley oldies from
the last three or four decades. Yet unlike something like Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, the record
somehow manages to avoid feeling like a nostalgia trip: having lost all their
songwriters, the brothers still retain their loyal Nashville sidemen, and all
the songs feature the usual polish, snappiness, and elegance of America’s
finest pop music team at the time. Much to their credit, if you forget to
look up the relevant song information before turning up the volume, the only
vibe you’ll be getting from this stuff is an early Sixties vibe. The title of the record refers to its thematic
separation, with livelier and more danceable songs mostly placed on Side A
and slower, moodier ballads occupying most of Side B — a strategy that seems
to have been en vogue around the
time (notably, the Elvis team did exactly the same with Something For Everybody the same year), but, in my opinion, never
manages to stand the test of time: too many ballads in a row, no matter how
pretty or well-polished, are a serious burden on one’s attention span, and it
is hardly surprising that most of the people commenting on the LP seem to
prefer Side A, myself included. After all, a good landscape is one that
frequently alternates between peaks and valleys, rather than putting the Alps
on your left and the Great Plains on your right. But maybe they thought, at
the time, that a structural trick like this might at least detract some
listeners from noticing the overall «antiquity» of the material. On which point they really shouldn’t have worried.
The first seven seconds of the album open with a mighty punch that would soon
be directly copied by The Beatles for their own arrangement of ‘Twist And
Shout’, and a racing guitar riff that was never a part of the original ‘My
Mammy’ as sung by, say, Al
Jolson in The Jazz Singer.
Fortunately for the Everlys, they don’t have to put on no blackface, but they
do have to rearrange the song so that it now sounds like a contemporary pop
number, and it’s a beautiful synthesis of vocal harmonies, thunderous rhythm
section, complex guitar interplay, and immaculate mix, all of it taking up
the space of just two minutes. Honestly, it could have been a hit, but the
brothers opted for something even more adventurous as the lead single off the
album (and paid the price for it). That particular something was ‘Muskrat’, a cover of
an old humorous country ditty by Merle Travis, completely remade as a
dark-tinged, almost proto-psychedelic dance number, with one of the weirdest
arrangements in Everly history. Opening with a «rusty-spring» bass line where
each note feels as if bouncing off a rubber ball, a reverberated swamp-style
guitar riff, and a percussion track sounding like a pack of rattlesnakes, it
adds a whole other dimension to Travis’ original set of animalistic metaphors
on the «life sure ain’t no rose garden» idea — the guitars and drums add a
nervous, paranoid, and even slightly shamanistic tweak to the song. For the
first time in their lives, it is as if The Everly Brothers engage in a bit of
black magic right before our eyes: I picture them actually brewing some
potent witches’ brew, chanting "muskrat,
muskrat, what makes your head so slick?" and "groundhog, groundhog, why is your back so
brown?" as they calmly disembowel the poor dumb animals, spilling
their guts inside the ugly-smelling black cauldron or something. Possibly
their audiences pictured something similar in horror, seeing as how the song
barely cracked the Top 100 when it was released in the US (it still reached
#20 on the UK charts, though, what with the Everlys’ overall overseas
popularity still at a much higher level than in their native country — or
maybe those Macbeth-reared Englishmen were just more tolerant of witchcraft). Anyway, while ‘Muskrat’ is an obvious stand-out
track on the album and an odd highlight of the brothers’ career as a whole, I
really dig most of the content of Side A. The old vaudeville number ‘My Gal
Sal’ is remade as a new vaudeville
number — slow, sleazy, filled with cool slappy bass licks from Floyd
Lightnin’ Chance and a shrill, piercing, unusually aggressive electric guitar
solo (probably from Hank Garland). ‘Grandfather’s Clock’ becomes a fast and
lively country-pop romp with a Chet Atkins melody crossing it from top to
bottom with the usual combination of speed, smoothness, and style. Even a
hicky throwaway track like ‘Mention My Name In Sheboygan’ is hard to resist,
with Marvin Hughes’ barrelhouse piano dusting off some long-forgotten Fats
Waller vibe and sharpening it up for 1961. And all through the set, the
Everlys’ twin harmonies remain tight, uplifting, and in no way indicative of
any potential troubles clouding the brothers’ attitude. Even if «beneath this
mask they are wearing a frown», you couldn’t really see it. The «slow side» is consistently graceful as well
but, as I already said, a bit hard to fully concentrate on. The funny thing
is that they actually did two
different versions of ‘Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo’ — a super-slow balladeering take and a
fast, upbeat, jazzy
take, driven by a lilting and fluent, Wes Montgomery-style jazz guitar; a
few available versions of the album (such as the digital copy I have, in
which most of the songs are introduced by short spoken introductions by the
brothers) accidentally include the fast rather than slow version, and while I
realize it is a bit banal to always prefer fast over slow, in this case the
exceptional guitar work is a great extra argument (no idea who actually is
playing, though, as the recording sessions for May 31, 1961 show no fewer
than five session guitarists). Yet the concept had to take precedence over
individual song quality, and so the generic version of the record only has
the slow ballad take, alas. Unfortunately, the rest of the songs just sound nice; even if they are all dutifully changed
into country-pop clothes, the potential for transformation is nowhere near as
grand here as it is in the case of ‘My Mammy’ or ‘Muskrat’, and with the
exception of the steady bass clip-clop of the cowboy’s horse on ‘Wayward Wind’,
the rest of the ballroom arrangements get glued to each other and offer few
moments of individuality to anybody but the most persistent listener, which
in this case sort of excludes yours truly. It’s just decent, solidly
performed Everly Brothers balladry, giving you more of those angelic
harmonies and first-rate Nashville arrangements that we already know pretty
much everything about. Of course, you just might be a sucker for old mushy Tin
Pan Alley ballads like ‘Don’t Blame Me’ re-recorded with a strong, toe-tappy
rhythmic foundation and steel guitars rather than symphonic orchestras — so I’m
not exactly saying it’s all pointless or anything. But if Side A of the album
does properly convey an adventurous spirit — take several different slices of
Americana and update them for the new decade — then Side B comes out as much
more perfunctory, bringing back to mind the simple truth that, one way or
another, the Everlys had to cope with a dearth of new material. For the
moment, they did a pretty good job of masking their troubles; but clearly,
this ruse could not go on indeterminately. |
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