The Everly Brothers: 12 Essential Tracks

“Bye Bye Love” had been rejected by 30 acts when songwriter Boudleaux Bryant played it for the Everlys, who had recently signed to Cadence Records in Nashville. Their recording was soon a Number Two pop hit and Number One country hit.  “Archie Bleyer [owner of Cadence, the Everly Brothers’ label] was down from New York, and he wanted to know what the kids hoped to get out of the whole thing,” Wesley Rose, the group’s music publisher and manager, told Rolling Stone in 1986. “Don said, ‘We’re hoping the record does good enough so I can buy a new case for my guitar.’ He did better than a new case for his guitar.”

The Everly’s first Number One hit has a hilarious premise: a teenage couple attend a lame movie, fall asleep, only to wake up at 4 a.m. and start panicking about what to tell their parents. It may sound innocent, but the song was banned in Boston for suggestive lyrics. The recording blew away Felice Bryant, who co-wrote the song with her husband, Boudleaux. “Coming out of their mouths, it was pure honey. Anything they put their voices on seemed to blend like custard. I think they could sing the telephone book to me. The blend was unbelievable.”

Phil Everly called this gorgeously haunting ballad (again written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant) one of the most important songs his group ever recorded, and it’s easy to hear why. “The band plays very quietly, and their voices, that beautiful, beautiful refrain – almost mystical,” Keith Richards once said. “‘Dream, dream dream …’ slipping in and out of unison and harmony. Load of bluegrass in those boys.”  The song had an endless life, hitting the charts in 1963 (by Richard Chamberlin), 1970 (by Glen Campbell) and 1981 (by Andy Gibb and Victoria Principal). But the definitive version will always be the Everlys.

After an incredible run of singles including “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie,” the Everly Brothers fulfilled their contract with Cadence Records with a bold move: Songs Our Daddy Taught Us (the Everlys’ father Ike was an accomplished singer and guitarist who played in a country duo with their mother, Margaret). The highlight is “Lightning Express,” a long, heartbreaking ballad about a penniless boy who boards a train to see his dying mother. The Everlys, like their heroes the Louvin Brothers, weren’t afraid to evoke chilling loneliness with close harmony.

This underrated minor hit is a sad ballad about a man separated from his lover after a careless gunshot lands him in jail for life. The band – who always used spare arrangements during this period – tapped a screwdriver against a coke bottle as percussion. “I don’t believe in perfection,” says Waddy Wachtel, who joined the Everly Brothers band as guitarist in 1972 and later worked with everyone from Warren Zevon to Keith Richards. “But this record is the closest that anyone has ever come to singing in perfect harmony. I do believe every word and syllable are as close to perfect as is humanly – or in their case, inhumanly possible  – because I feel humans could never sing this well. It’s a miraculous record.”

After a contract dispute, the band left Cadence Records and signed to Warner Bros. The first single was the self-written breakup anthem “Cathy’s Clown.” It sold more than two million copies, spent five weeks at Number One and became their best-selling song ever. This live clip shows them performing the song on U.K. television backed by the Crickets.

The band had a rough Sixties. The brothers got divorced from their wives and hooked on drugs – Don’s doctor got him addicted on speed via a “vitamin treatment” and he attempted suicide before finally getting clean in 1966. They proved they hadn’t lost a step with “Milk Train,” a trippy country-rock gem released as a single in August 1968.