The parents of BMI president Del Bryant, Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, wrote 31 songs for the Everly Brothers, including their first hit “Bye Bye Love” and signature songs like “Wake Up Little Susie,” “Love Hurts” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” Bryant shared his thoughts on Phil Everly, a man he had known since 1957.
My father used to get his hair cut by Ike, their father, in Madison, Tenn. Ike was always saying, “I’ve got these two boys and they’re really good singers.” Everybody in Nashville has a relative who sings, so my father, much like anybody else, would say, “I’d love to hear them.” But it never got to dad enough where he initiated anything further.
His publisher, Wesley Rose of Acuff-Rose, was friendly with [Cadence Records owner] Archie Bleyer, who called my folks in to sing a few songs for a new group he was signing. They showed them “Bye Bye Love,” which the boys seemed to like pretty well. It had been turned down by scads of people, but my father had faith in that song.
Initially, it was supposed to only be sent to country stations, but the people in the mailroom got confused somehow and sent it out to everybody. It exploded in R&B, country and pop, the most fortuitous accident for my family.
It was after “Bye Bye Love” was screaming up the charts that I first met the boys. They came by the house looking for more material and they were around with some sort of regularity, learning songs, being pitched songs. Dad would write a large batch of songs specifically for them, always tailor-made — “vehicles” he would call them. My parents had done it for Jimmy Dickens, Eddy Arnold, Carl Smith. They had 31 different songs recorded by the Everlys, and to get those 31 they probably wrote 300. “Always It’s You,” the B-side to “Cathy’s Clown,” is my absolute favorite — it’s as pretty as “All I Have to Do Is Dream.”
My father was a very studied musician. He understood harmony to the nth degree and made some of the stuff a little bit complex, knowing there was never a problem with any harmony from Phil or, with Don, any confusion with a lead line. Phil was the master class in harmony singing, let’s face it. He really knew that the harmony was adjunct to the total sound and he never tried to over-sing his part, and consequently never under-sang his part. The harmony has to fit right in the pocket, and he knew exactly how to put it in the right pocket. There was nothing left over, nothing wanting.
-As told to Phil Gallo