Review: The Everly Brothers - The Everly Brothers' Best (1959)

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.

REVIEW

I understand that Cadence was a small record label with a very limited number of cash cows (Andy Williams and the Chordettes were their biggest assets in addition to the Everlys), but that still hardly gave Archie Bleyer the moral right to fuck up the brothers’ catalog in such a shameless manner. The self-titled debut was alright as far as single-compiling LPs go, the conceptual daddy-pleasing record made sense as well, but after that, the relation between the Everlys’ singles and LPs becomes dreadfully confusing. Basically, all of their singles released for Cadence in between mid-1958 and early 1960, when they packed up and left for Warner Bros., could have fit on one modestly sized LP. Instead, they were divided in two and messily arranged across two separate records — 1959’s The Everly Brothers’ Best and 1960’s The Fabulous Style Of The Everly Brothers, while the empty space on the LP was ruthlessly filled up with songs that had already been released previously on The Everly Brothers. Thus, as you can see from the track listing, we have already covered the entire first half of this album earlier — leaving just six more songs to discuss.

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.