About The Song
At the dawn of the rockabilly craze, many were predicting that the death of country music was eminent. The new nationwide musical surge, headed by Elvis Presley, put traditional artists on life support virtually overnight. The young performers who were now dominating Billboard’s country chart (Presley’s “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock” were multiple-week #1 country hits) had absolutely no desire to save the traditional hillbilly sounds that had established country music’s identity from the beginning. To them, the only sound that they were interested in was the sound of the cash registers and the boatloads of money generated by their enormously popular rock ‘n’ roll records of the mid-1950s. Yet, in the midst of all these Southern boys who rocked all the major charts of the day, two brothers emerged who brought old-style country harmonies to modern, Nashville-penned songs.
Don and Phil Everly had come from a family which had a deep rural music tradition. Parents Ike and Margaret Everly had been singing country music on radio for a generation. Migrating from Kentucky in the mid-1940s, this husband and wife duo had become the anchor and identity of KMA Radio in Shenandoah, Iowa, which then boasted (along with KWTO in Springfield, Missouri) one of the biggest and best stables of country music talent in the Midwest among low-powered stations (both KMA and KWTO transmitted with only 5,000 watts). The Springfield station ended up edging out KMA in prestige because of a little show that KWTO originated called the “Ozark Jubilee,” and with the assistance of some nationally-known stars who signed up to appear on it, the program later moved from radio to network television for a healthy six-year run in prime time.
The Everlys’ sons were brought up with their parents’ traditional country style of picking and singing. While the boys were still in grade school, they would perform with Ike and Margaret, both on KMA and on the stage. In the mid-1950s when their sons finished high school, the older Everlys retired from the music business and Don and Phil decided to move to Nashville to try to take the family’s country music tradition to the next level. Thanks in large part to their father’s Music City contacts, the boys were immediately hired to play local clubs. In short order, their close harmonies caught the attention of several record labels and promoters. Columbia gave the Everlys a one-record tryout, but when that single flopped, the small Cadence Record Company stepped forward with an offer.
At about the same time that Don and Phil were making their move to Nashville, Boudleaux and Felice Bryant were preparing to make a move to the city’s suburbs. Boudleaux, who had been named for a Frenchman that had saved his father’s life in World War I, was born in Georgia. By the time he finished high school, the boy was not only a classical and jazz violinist, he also played piano, bass and sousaphone. Throughout his late teens and early twenties he performed with symphonies, jazz bands, country groups and pop combos. He excelled in chord structure and harmony.
While working a gig in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Schroeder Hotel, Boudleaux met a young woman named Felice Scaduto, who was employed by the hotel as an elevator operator. It was love at first sight. After just five days they were married and within a few weeks the two had left Milwaukee. Boudleaux continued playing small clubs, wherever the work would take him, and Felice would sometimes get bored alone at home, so she passed the time by writing little songs. While she didn’t have the formal music training of her husband, Felice had grown up in a family which sang Italian folk songs and played instruments by ear. She had a natural feel for music and she also had a gift for writing poetry. The union of her innate strengths bore fruit in her songs.
Boudleaux had also been composing music for some time, and when he finally discovered that his wife was a better tunesmith than any of the musicians with whom he worked, he began to spend his Sundays writing with Felice. After a while he thought that some of their stuff sounded pretty good. After they had about 80 songs finished, the Bryants began writing letters seeking a publisher. Most of those letters were returned unopened. Then Boudleaux sent nationally-known radio and television personality Arthur Godfrey a piece they had written called “Country Boy.” Godfrey liked it, but he wanted all publishing rights and co-credit as a writer, which nixed the deal.
In the meantime, the couple ventured to Cincinnati where they made contact with one of Boudleaux’s old friends from his club-playing days, Rome Johnson. Johnson was acquainted with Fred Rose, head of Nashville’s Acuff-Rose Publishing Company. Rose was also busy guiding the career of a new upstart in country music named Hank Williams, whose popularity was just beginning to break at the time. With Johnson’s urging (and an introductory telephone call), the Bryants went to Nashville to meet with Rose. He also expressed an interest in “Country Boy” and offered Boudleaux and Felice a songwriter’s contract on the spot, which they accepted. The song found its way to “Little” Jimmy Dickens, who logged his second Billboard Top Ten hit with it in the summer of 1949.
By 1956 the couple had composed scores of charted songs including “Out Behind the Barn” (another Dickens top ten), a couple of number ones – Red Foley’s “Midnight” and Carl Smith’s “Hey Joe,” (Frankie Laine’s pop version of this tune sold over a million copies), and “How’s the World Treating You” (a top five hit for Eddy Arnold). The royalties from these and many more releases had brought the Bryants their first taste of financial freedom. They could now live out many of their dreams, and one of the most important things they wanted to do was build a new home. They chose a wooded lot on Old Hickory Boulevard and hired a construction crew.
One day while driving out to inspect the builders’ work, Boudleaux looked over to Felice and said that he had just come up with a terrific song idea for Johnnie & Jack. He told her what he had so far, and they started working on it together. By the time they got to the construction site, they had the song finished. It was called “Bye Bye Love.” I suspect Boudleaux targeted Johnnie & Jack for the song because they already had scored a couple of big hits for RCA Victor with the word “love” in the title – “Poison Love” and “Ashes of Love.” A few days later, the Bryants showed “Bye Bye Love” to Johnny Wright. He liked the song well enough, but claimed to already have all the songs they needed for their new album project. So that was that.
Cadence, an up-and-coming record label specializing in rock and R&B material, had added a few country artists to its recording operation and “Bye Bye Love,” in addition to several other Bryant songs, was sent to the company’s head man Archie Bleyer. Bleyer was assigned to pick the music for the label’s three country acts and he chose “Bye Bye Love” for the Everly Brothers.
Employing the same country harmony style they had used since childhood, the Everlys’ version of “Bye Bye Love” had a slightly upbeat tempo, and didn’t use a fiddle or a steel guitar (featuring instead the innovative playing of guitar virtuosos Hank Garland and Chet Atkins), but it was still a very country-sounding cut. Cadence executives didn’t really know whether to market the record toward the pop market or the country market, so they ended up promoting it in both.
“Bye Bye Love” debuted on Billboard’s country chart on May 13, 1957 and began a steady climb. Two weeks later it appeared on Billboard’s pop chart. The record reached the top of the country playlist on June 22nd where it would hold the #1 position for seven weeks. On the pop side, “Bye Bye Love” was a near-miss, peaking at #2 and maintaining that position for four weeks. Don & Phil’s very country-sounding song had become a major crossover hit, and therefore several acts were waiting in the wings to record their own versions of it. One of the most unlikely to do so was honky-tonk’s Webb Pierce, who notched a successful placement of “Bye Bye Love” on Billboard’s country chart at #7.
The Everlys’ first chart-topper set them up for even bigger things later in the year. For their second single, Don and Phil recorded another Bryant composition “Wake Up Little Susie,” which skyrocketed to #1 on both charts simultaneously (four weeks in pop, eight weeks in country). Boudleaux and Felice then penned “Bird Dog,” “Devoted to You” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream” for the boys, all big hits. Over the next four years, the Everlys would become teen idols and the most successful “brother” act in show business. Screaming girls would greet them at concerts and their many national television appearances. Kids everywhere were singing their hits, and much of the credit for this success and acclaim had to go to the songwriting Bryants.
At the same time the Everlys were selling millions of records, their country harmony style was heavily influencing four lads from Britain. The Beatles would later admit that much of their sound came from trying to imitate Don and Phil’s special vocal blends. A host of other groups and singers borrowed from the boys too. Because of the major exposure the Everly Brothers received in the late-50s and early-60s’ rock/teen market, it is usually overlooked that the Everlys’ best chart numbers were earned on country playlists. Unlike so many other acts of this period that changed their sound to appeal to a broader rock base, Don and Phil simply did what they had always done.
With their simple, acoustic guitar licks, country harmonies and straightforward arrangements, all of the Everly Brothers’ songs reflected their rural roots. Many of the boys’ hits were later covered by other artists. When these tunes reappeared, they were usually performed by country acts and achieved their high chart numbers almost exclusively on country playlists.
In addition to the aforementioned Webb Pierce rendition of “Bye Bye Love,” some of the most-successful Everly Brothers remakes included “All I Have To Do Is Dream” (recorded by Glen Campbell & Bobbie Gentry in 1970), “(Til) I Kissed You” (by Connie Smith in 1976), “So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad)” (by Hank Williams, Jr. & Lois Johnson in 1970, Connie Smith in 1976 and Emmylou Harris in 1983), “When Will I Be Loved” (by Linda Ronstadt in 1975), “Walk Right Back” (by Anne Murray in 1978), “Crying In The Rain” (by Tammy Wynette in 1981) and “Cathy’s Clown” (by Reba McEntire in 1989).
Thus, during country music’s most-confused period of the late-1950s, when young, new acts were being accused of ruining the genre with rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll, the Everly Brothers took country music’s traditional influence and helped spread it around the world. Along the way, they also greatly helped Boudleaux and Felice Bryant live many more of their dreams and earn shoo-in inductions into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1991, a rare accomplishment for non-performing songwriters. The Everly Brothers achieved their own election to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001, and Don was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2019, earning that organization’s first “Iconic Riff” award for his distinctive rhythm guitar intro on “Wake Up Little Susie.”