One half of a country rock duo whose harmonies heavily shaped popular music
‘‘Wherever I go, it’s ‘Are you still mad at each other?’ I say, ‘Do you have a family? Do you have a brother?’ ’’
Don in 1999, speaking about the sibling rivalry
As the elder of two singing brothers, Don Everly was part of the most successful duo in pop chart history. With their roots in country music, the Everly Brothers brought close harmonies and sweet melodies into the rambunctious world of 1950s rock’n’roll, creating a string of hits that included Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Little Susie, All I Have to Do Is Dream, When Will I Be Loved and Cathy’s Clown.
Their lyrics often dealt with teenage angst and their songs had a strong backbeat, but it was the two-part vocal harmonies of Don and younger brother Phil that made the Everly Brothers stand out. With Don generally singing the lower harmony and taking most of the solo lines, together their voices were simple and honest with a natural twang.
The profundity of their influence on popular music was readily acknowledged by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and Simon and Garfunkel. ‘‘When John and I first started to write songs, I was Phil and he was Don,’’ McCartney once said.
All of the brothers’ Top Ten hits were sandwiched between 1957 and 1962. By the mid-1960s their star was waning, eclipsed first by the Beatles and the British beat boom and then further sidelined by psychedelic and progressive rock. Yet they regained credibility towards the end of the 1960s when their music returned to its country roots and they were recognised as pioneers of the burgeoning country-rock movement, whose adherents included the Byrds, Bob Dylan and Gram Parsons.
Despite the sweetness of their harmonies, offstage relations between the brothers were notoriously inharmonious. There were fights, tantrums and, eventually, an inability even to share a room except when they were on stage.
They continued to perform live and to record together until 1973. After that they spent a decade communicating only through managers and lawyers and did not even speak to each other at their father’s funeral. Neither enjoyed significant success as a solo artist and in 1983 they agreed to bury the hatchet and reunited, recording a trio of well-received albums. After 1989 they concentrated solely on live performances, playing their old hits to nostalgic audiences of baby boomers.
In addition to his difficult relationship with his brother, Don Everly’s life was full of other seemingly endless troubles. There were two divorces, lengthy periods of drug addiction and alcohol abuse, and a spell in a psychiatric hospital.
He was born Isaac Donald Everly in 1937, in Brownie, Kentucky. His parents, Ike and Margaret Everly, were both musicians who had a show on country radio in Shenandoah, Iowa. By the age of 8 Don had joined the show and had his own spot, in which he was given three or four songs and required to read a commercial. Phil was soon brought into the act, too, and they sang with their parents as the Everly Family.
In 1954 the Everly family moved to Nashville and the brothers were ready to perform on their own. Under the mentorship of the guitarist and talent scout Chet Atkins, Don started to make headway as a songwriter.
Two years later, in 1956, the brothers cut a single for Columbia called Keep a’ Lovin’ Me. It failed to sell but the Everlys found a new patron in Wesley Rose, president of AcuffRose, one of the biggest music publishing companies in Nashville. He promised them a record deal if they signed with Acuff-Rose as songwriters and duly introduced them to Archie Bleyer, owner of Cadence Records.
Bleyer saw the Everly Brothers primarily as a country act, hence his decision to make their first Cadence single Bye Bye Love, by the established country songwriting team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. It became a huge crossover hit, making No 2 in the pop charts and only kept from the top by Elvis Presley.
Bye Bye Love was followed by Wake Up Little Susie, and over the next three years the Everlys poured out hits on the Cadence label. In 1960 they signed with Warner Brothers, debuting with the self-composed Cathy’s Clown, which became the biggest single of their career, selling eight million copies. It was followed by So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad) (1960), Walk Right Back (1961) and Crying in the Rain (1962).
There were a number of reasons for their commercial decline. The drafting of both brothers into the Marines for six months in 1961 at the height of their success did not help. Then on a 1962 ‘‘comeback’’ tour of Britain, Don was unable to perform because of a drug overdose and mental health problems. Just as crucially, in 1961 the brothers fell out with Acuff-Rose, which denied them access to the source of some of their strongest material, including their own compositions.
Beatlemania and the changes it wrought upon teenage musical tastes affected their chart fortunes. The sibling rivalry was also getting out of hand; the final straw was when Don was so drunk a show had to be stopped halfway through and Phil stormed off, smashing his guitar in disgust.
Don Everly released a few solo records before reuniting with his brother in 1983 in a comeback concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The brothers also recorded the albums EB 84 (which included Wings of a Nightingale, written for them by McCartney); Born Yesterday (Sunday) (1985); and Some Hearts (1988).
Speaking about their clashes in 1999 Don said: ‘‘Everything is different about us, except when we sing together. I’m a liberal Democrat, he’s pretty conservative. We give each other a lot of space [on reunion tours] . . . Wherever I go, it’s ‘Are you still mad at each other?’ I say, ‘Do you have a family? Do you have a brother?’ ’’
Yet he could not deny their musical chemistry. ‘‘That’s one part where being brothers makes a difference. It’s just instinct,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s the charm of what the Everly Brothers are: two guys singing as one.’’
Phil died of lung disease in 2014. Don is survived by his wife Adela, son Edan Everly, a musician with whom he would often play concerts, and three daughters.
The Everly Brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001, fitting tributes to a pair hailed by Rolling Stone as ‘‘the most important vocal duo in rock’’. Or, as Bob Dylan said of the brothers: ‘‘We owe these guys everything. They started it all.’’ Don Everly singer b February 1, 1937 d August 21, 2021