Everly Brothers’ Don Everly dies
He leaves legacy as half of chart-topping, rock ’n’ roll duo
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Don Everly, half of the pioneering Everly Brothers whose harmonizing country rock hits affected a generation of rock ’n’ roll, has died. He was 84.
Everly died at his home in Nashville, Tenn., on Saturday, said attorney and family spokesperson Linda Edell Howard. His brother, Phil Everly, died in 2014 at age 74.
“Don lived by what he felt in his heart,” a statement from the family said. “Don expressed his appreciation for the ability to live his dreams … living in love with his soul mate and wife Adela, and sharing the music that made him an Everly Brother. Don always expressed how grateful he was for his fans.”
In the late 1950s and ’60s, the duo of Don and Phil drew upon their rural roots with their strummed guitars and high, yearning harmonies, while their poignant songs — many by the team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant — embodied teenage restlessness and energy. Their 19 top 40 hits included “Bye Bye Love,” “Let It Be Me,” “All I Have to Do Is Dream” and “Wake Up Little Susie,” and performers from the Beatles to Simon & Garfunkel cited them as key influences.
“The Everly Brothers are integral to the fabric of American music,” Jerry Lee Lewis said in a statement. “With my friend Don’s passing, I am reflective … reflective on a life full of wonderful friends, spectacular music and fond memories. There’s a lot I can say about Don, what he and Phil meant to me both as people and as musicians, but I am going to reflect today.”
Songs like “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie” appealed to the postwar generation of baby boomers, and their deceptively simple harmonies hid greater meaning among the lighter pop fare of the era.
The two broke up amid quarreling in 1973 after 16 years of hits, then reunited in 1983, “sealing it with a hug,” Phil Everly said.
Although their number of hit records declined in the late 1980s, they had successful concert tours in the U.S. and Europe.
They were inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, the same year they had a hit pop-country record, “Born Yesterday.” Two years earlier, they had success with the up-tempo ballad “On the Wings of a Nightingale,” written by Paul McCartney.
“As a singer, a songwriter and a guitar innovator, Don Everly was one of the most talented and impactful artists in popular music history,” Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, said in a statement. The brothers were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001.
The brothers began singing country music in 1945 on their family’s radio show in Shenandoah, Iowa. Their breakthrough came when they moved to Nashville in the mid-1950s and signed a recording contract with New York-based Cadence Records.
After Phil’s death, Don said that he felt a spiritual message from his brother before he died.
“Our love was and will always be deeper than any earthly differences we might have had,” Don Everly said in 2014.
He said in a 1986 Associated Press interview that he and his brother were successful because “we never followed trends. We did what we liked and followed our instincts. Rock ‘n’ roll did survive, and we were right about that. Country did survive, and we were right about that. You can mix the two, but people said we couldn’t.”