New book looks at songwriting legend Bryant’s Milwaukee days
You may not know the name Felice Bryant, but you’ve heard her songs.
After Felice met her future husband Boudleaux while she was working at a hotel in Milwaukee in 1945, the future Songwriters Hall of Famers became one of the most revered teams in music history, writing more than 6,000 recorded songs, including timeless classics like the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love,” “Wake Up Little Susie” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream.”
Boudleaux died in 1987, Felice in 2003, but lately they’ve received some renewed recognition. In September, they were spotlighted in Ken Burns’ acclaimed documentary series “Country Music,” and they were honored with an exhibit and star-studded tribute concert at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.
Now they’re profiled in “Nashville’s Songwriting Sweethearts: The Boudleaux and Felice Bryant Story,” written by Bill C. Malone, the Madisonbased author of the defining historical text “Country Music, USA,” and his wife, biographer Bobbie Malone. The book was published by the University of Oklahoma Press.
A great deal of the book’s first chapter explores Felice’s upbringing in Milwaukee.
A neighborhood of immigrants
Felice was a name suggested by her husband, Boudleaux. She was actually born Matilda Genevieve Scaduto, on Aug. 7, 1925, at St. Mary’s Hospital in Milwaukee. She grew up in an apartment on Humboldt Boulevard, in what is now the Riverwest neighborhood, with her father Salvatore , her mother Katherine, and her older sister Kitty. The apartment was in a house owned by Felice’s maternal grandparents; her grandfather and her father, a Sicilian immigrant, were barbers who had a shop together when she was born.
The neighborhood was primarily Polish, although in the 1920s there was a surge of Italian families that moved in from the Third Ward.
“Growing up in this mixed immigrant haven, which included Hungarians and Bohemians, Felice listened to the different musical sounds that ‘would just filter out on the street in the summer,’ “the Malones write. She heard plenty of Italian music in her home; her maternal grandfather played mandolin, her mother piano and her father guitar.
“She also had the influence of the pop music of the day,” according to an interview with her late husband Boudleaux quoted in “Sweethearts.” “You know that, of course, her family had a radio, and she had enough (of a musical gift) that she could hear a song through in a movie and come out of a movie singing the whole thing: lyrics, melody, and everything.”
Felice performed in talent shows beginning when she was in preschool, including one that she won at the Oriental Theatre. She performed at the Riverside Theater for the radio show “Cousin Betty’s Children Hour” on WISN, and on various children’s programs for WEMP beginning when she was 5.
When Felice was 11, her parents divorced. Her mother’s parents were so ashamed, they were no longer allowed to live in the apartment at their house on Humboldt.
After the divorce, the girls and their mother lived at 1105 W. Vliet St. Katherine forced Kitty and Felice to drop out of school, “probably expecting her daughters to contribute to the household income … a decision Felice always regretted having been made for her,” the Malones write.
“As Felice grew older, her mother became increasingly abusive and demanding,” the Malones write. “Felice had ways of avoiding her mother’s volatile moods. … She immersed herself in music, poetry and work.”
Dated Liberace
Felice performed in musicals at the Riverside. She also worked at the Riverside as an usher, and during World War II, directed and performed shows at Milwaukee’s USO.
Her mother tried to set her up with typically older and affluent men, and at her mother’s wishes, Felice even went on a date with a pre-fame Liberace, who grew up in West Allis.
When she was 18, Felice did get married, to Michael Geraci, a member of the Coast Guard from West Allis. They relocated to a base in Texas; after two weeks, she returned home alone, realizing the marriage wouldn’t work.
This was two years before her fateful Valentine’s Day encounter with Boudleaux. It was 1945, and Felice worked mornings as a file clerk for Falk Corp. and evenings as an elevator operator at the Schroeder Hotel, now the Hilton Milwaukee City Center.
Operating the elevator, she spied Boudleaux, a fiddle player for a band beginning a two-week residency at the hotel’s cocktail lounge. Felice later told interviewers Boudleaux looked like a man she danced with in a dream she had when she was 8.
“They hit it off immediately. During the band’s next break, Boudleaux introduced her to a friend as his fiancée,” the Malones write.
Five days later, they were unofficially married; she was technically still married to Geraci.
“When Felice disappeared with Boudleaux, she told no one of her intentions, not even her sister,” the Malones write. “Katherine was so distraught when she found her daughter missing that she contacted the FBI. According to the Bryant sons and Felice’s sister, Kitty, Katherine tried to drag Felice by the hair from the hotel where the young couple were staying in Milwaukee, and she broke her daughter’s nose in the process.”
But love prevailed, and Katherine helped Felice obtain a divorce. Felice and Boudleaux were officially married on Sept. 5, 1945.
Marriage in song
Three years later, they had their first hit, “Country Boy,” for Little Jimmy Dickens, and two years after that, moved to Nashville, becoming the city’s “first professional songwriting team,” according to the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Recorded by Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel and the Grateful Dead, the Bryants’ songs have sold more than a half-billion copies, the hall of fame estimates, and the couple’s fans include Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Elvis Costello and Keith Richards.
“I’d still be playing fiddle if it hadn’t been for my wife,” reads an old quote from Boudleaux included in “Sweethearts.” “Without Felice, I’d be a complete nothing.”
Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.
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