Review: The Everly Brothers - The Everly Brothers (1957)
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.
REVIEW
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?
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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