Review: The Everly Brothers - It's Everly Time! (1960)
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.
REVIEW
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.
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.
Only Solitaire reviews: The Everly Brothers