Bear Family (79.51) (76.21) (71.21) (78.54) (76.18) (71.51) (77.35)
Everything harmonises in the studio for Don and Phil, but everything else is falling apart.
This review appeared in Record Collector, January 2006.
Tucked away in the lavish book which accompanies The Price Of Fame boxed-set, Don Everly comments, “We were associated with the Fifties. Being The Everly Brothers in the Sixties was a handicap.” Playing through the 228 tracks that they recorded for Warner Brothers between 1960 and 1965, I think he is wrong. There were many other factors and it was not simply being old-fashioned which put them out of favour.
After three very successful years for Cadence, The Everly Brothers signed with the new Warners Brothers record label and the first single was the triple awesome Cathy’s Clown, which Don wrote about a former girlfriend. Phil praises Buddy Harman’s drumming and says, “When he did that Cathy’s Clown riff, yeah, bam, we were home.” Their first Warners album, It’s Everly Time, featured their exquisite harmonies on So Sad and Sleepless Nights and the second, A Date With The Everly Brothers, included a barnstorming version of Little Richard’s Lucille and the first recording of Love Hurts, which should have been a single. It looked as though the Everlys’ success would continue onwards and upwards, but they argued with their manager and music publisher, Wesley Rose, over a revival of Bing Crosby’s Temptation, and as a result they were denied new songs from the Acuff-Rose writers. “Had Wesley been publishing Temptation, it would have been a different story,” says Don.