Review: The Everly Brothers - Both Sides Of An Evening (1961)

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.

REVIEW

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.

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.

• Only Solitaire reviews: The Everly Brothers