Podcast appearances and mentions of Kennedy Jones

USC postgame 3-15 Paul Mainieri, Jake McCoy, Kennedy Jones by Phil Kornblut, Chris Burgin, and Josh Cohen

USC postgame 3-7 (Paul Mainieri, Brandon Stone, Kennedy Jones) by Phil Kornblut, Chris Burgin, and Josh Cohen

John Strickland joins the guys right at the top with an interesting story about Michael Flint. They tackle the question of which team would you rather face in baseball post season, FSU or Clemson. The handwritten letter for Kennedy Jones criticizing an at bat from Saturday makes its way to the discussion. Getting back to some football, the question arises of whether or not the SEC is an offensive or defensive league these days. that spurs some great convo about the leveling the playing field and looking beyond just the defensive production stats to account for the opponent. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dylan Eskew and Kennedy Jones 4-28 (Photo: Gamecock Athletics) by SportsTalk

This week we chat with Bates Associate A.D. for Athletic Performance Nick Cooke, as March is National Athletic Training Month! Plus, our Bobcats of the Week come from the baseball and softball diamonds, and the swimming teams turned in strong performances at the NCAA Championships. All that and more, on the Bates Bobcast! Interviews this episode: 1:16 -- Peter Casares, Head Coach, Swimming & Diving 13:57 -- Henry Prince '27, Baseball (Male Bobcat of the Week) 20:56 -- Kennedy Jones '26, Softball (Female Bobcat of the Week) 30:49 -- Caroline Taggart '25, Women's Lacrosse 36:49 -- Nick Cooke, Bates Associate A.D. for Athletic Performance

Rod Arquette Show Daily Rundown – Friday, December 8, 20234:38 pm: Brett Tolman, former U.S. Attorney for Utah and now Executive Director of Right on Crime joins Rod for a conversation about the indictment of Hunter Biden.6:05 pm: Tyler O'Neil, Managing Editor of The Daily Signal joins the program for a conversation about his piece on a transgender activist that is threatening to target and rape Christian girls in bathrooms.6:20 pm: Kennedy Jones of the Larry H. Miller Group joins Rod for a preview of Monday's Larry H. Miller Christmas sing-along at the Delta Center.6:38 pm: We'll listen back to Rod's conversations this week with Karol Markowicz of the New York Post on the real cost of shoplifting, and (at 6:50 pm) with Fox and Friends Host Brian Kilmeade about his new book titled “Teddy and Booker T: How Two American Icons Blazed a Path for Racial Equality.”

When looking at South Carolina's running back room in 2023, which is comprised mainly of four backs in Juju McDowell, Dakereon Joyner, Mario Anderson Jr., and Dontavious Braswell, most can agree that there isn't necessarily a clear cut favorite to become the lead back in Dowell Loggains offense. If one of these guys could become a lead back for Shane Beamer and South Carolina's Football team this Fall, which guy is the mostly likely to do so? Andrew makes the case for one specific back and subsequently two more minor cases for two other backs to take the mantle at that spot.Lastly, Andrew discusses the newest transfer addition for Mark Kingston and South Carolina's Baseball program in UNC-Greensboro transfer Kennedy Jones, discussing some of his most notable stats from his first two collegiate seasons and why his addition is so important for the Gamecocks' batting lineup!Who do you think could be the lead back for South Carolina in 2023?Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!BirddogsGo to birddogs.com/lockedoncollege and they'll throw in a free custom birddogs Yeti-style tumbler with every order.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Don't miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When looking at South Carolina's running back room in 2023, which is comprised mainly of four backs in Juju McDowell, Dakereon Joyner, Mario Anderson Jr., and Dontavious Braswell, most can agree that there isn't necessarily a clear cut favorite to become the lead back in Dowell Loggains offense. If one of these guys could become a lead back for Shane Beamer and South Carolina's Football team this Fall, which guy is the mostly likely to do so? Andrew makes the case for one specific back and subsequently two more minor cases for two other backs to take the mantle at that spot. Lastly, Andrew discusses the newest transfer addition for Mark Kingston and South Carolina's Baseball program in UNC-Greensboro transfer Kennedy Jones, discussing some of his most notable stats from his first two collegiate seasons and why his addition is so important for the Gamecocks' batting lineup! Who do you think could be the lead back for South Carolina in 2023? Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Birddogs Go to birddogs.com/lockedoncollege and they'll throw in a free custom birddogs Yeti-style tumbler with every order. FanDuel Make Every Moment More. Don't miss the chance to get your No Sweat First Bet up to ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS in Bonus Bets when you go FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week we celebrate the start of Short Term with a look back on some historic performances. Softball defeated No. 8 nationally ranked Tufts 1-0 on Saturday, men's golf hosted and recorded their best finish ever at the NESCAC Championship, and rowing won its 10th consecutive President's Cup. All that and more... Interviews this episode: 1:09 -- Madison Hollis '26 (Female Bobcat of the Week) and Kennedy Jones '26, Softball. 8:15 -- John Kawakami '24, Men's Golf. 13:13 -- Darya Lee '23, Women's Rowing 1st Varsity Eight Bow Seat. 21:02 -- Aidan Braithwaite '23, Men's Rowing 1st Varsity Eight Coxswain (Male Bobcat of the Week). 29:37 -- Chrissy Aman '24, Women's Track and Field. 40:28 -- Robby Griffin '23, Men's Track and Field.

In the fourth episode of Deep River: The Legacy of the Spirituals, Jonathon Turner, the ASO's Gospel Meets Symphony Choirmaster, and Brenda Justice, Coordinator of Choral Programs, join co-hosts Christopher and Tom to discuss Nathaniel Dett, a composer, choir leader, pianist, teacher, poet, writer, and seminal figure in bringing spirituals to a classical setting. The episode concludes with a performance of Dett's The Chariot Jubilee by the Akron Symphony Orchestra, Akron Symphony Chorus and tenor Kennedy Jones from November 18, 2016. (Photo by R. Nathaniel Dett Collection - Sibley Music Library - Eastman School of Music)

Welcome to the seventh and final in the Pledge Week series of episodes, putting up old bonus episodes posted to my Patreon in an attempt to encourage more subscriptions. If you like this, consider subscribing to the Patreon at http://patreon.com/join/andrewhickey . I'm glad to say that this pledge week has been successful enough that I may do another of these in a year or so. This one is about "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford, a record that was a huge influence on many, many artists in the mid fifties. ----more---- As we're reaching the end of 1956, and are also now on the fiftieth episode of the podcast, I thought it worth while trying to fill in a few gaps in the year we've been covering. And one of those gaps is the song "Sixteen Tons". We've mentioned this song a couple of times before -- we talked during the episode on Bo Diddley about how much he liked the song, and it also came up in the episode on Johnny Cash, but because it's not actually a rock and roll song as such we never looked at it in any more detail. But it's a song that was a huge hit in 1956, and which influenced many rock and rollers, and so we should probably have a quick look at its history: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Sixteen Tons"] That's the version of the song that became a hit in 1956, by Tennessee Ernie Ford, but it's not the original version of the song. The song was originally written by Merle Travis, one of the greatest country guitarists of all time. Merle Travis is credited with the invention of "Travis picking", a type of guitar playing where you play a bass line on the bottom two strings of the guitar while you play melody on the top two, with the melody syncopated as in ragtime -- it's a particular pattern that can be heard in everything from "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel to "Just Breathe" by Pearl Jam. Travis' own playing was more complicated than the kind of music that now gets called "Travis picking", as you can hear on, say, "Cannonball Rag": [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Cannonball Rag"] That owes a lot to ragtime and blues, not just to country music. While Travis is credited as the inventor of this style, he wasn't actually its originator. It was actually invented by a black blues guitarist called Arnold Shultz, who lived in Travis' home state of Kentucky. Shultz never made a record, but he taught the style to several other guitarists, including one called Kennedy Jones, who in turn taught it to many other guitarists -- including Ike Everly, who we'll be hearing more about in the second year of the main podcast. Travis spent the early part of his career as a fairly conventional country singer. He started off as one of the very first artists on Syd Nathan's King Records, before King made its turn to the R&B for which it became better known, but then in 1946 he signed to Capitol Records, where he made country-pop records like "Divorce Me COD": [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Divorce Me COD"] But then Travis made an album called "Folk Songs of the Hills", which was very different from anything else he'd recorded before. This was before the long-playing vinyl record, and so it was a box of four singles, all of which consisted just of Travis singing to his own acoustic guitar accompaniment. The songs were a mixture of the traditional folk songs that the title led you to expect: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "John Henry"] and new songs written by Travis himself, mostly about the culture of the mining areas of Kentucky where he grew up. And "Sixteen Tons" was one of those. In its original version it started with a spoken introduction explaining the concept of "company scrip", where someone could work for a company and be paid, not in cash that could be spent anywhere, but in tokens that could only be exchanged for goods sold by the company they worked for. This was an unfortunately common practice in the early and mid twentieth century, and those of you who've been following developments in cryptocurrencies and the big tech companies know that it's making a return at the moment: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Sixteen Tons"] Travis' recording was not particularly successful, and he went back to recording the honky tonk country records that he was successful with, but his career started to fade in the fifties. Until his friend Tennessee Ernie Ford, who had become nationally known thanks to some appearances on I Love Lucy, decided he wanted to record a new version of "Sixteen Tons" in 1956, a decade after Travis' original version. Ford's version is very, very, different from Travis' original. It cuts out the spoken explanation, and where Travis' version is a ragtime-influenced guitar track, Ford's is taken at a much lower pitch, and it is dominated by clarinet and fingersnaps. It's quite an astonishing arrangement, although it was soon imitated by all sorts of people, not least Peggy Lee in her version of "Fever": [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Sixteen Tons"] Ford's recording became an instant classic, inspiring everyone from Johnny Cash to Bo Diddley to Tom Waits. It's a perfect marriage of song, arrangement, and vocalist, and one of those records that perfectly encapsulates its time. It also revived the career of Merle Travis, who had stopped having any commercial success with his electric recordings, despite being a musician's musician who every single other guitarist in the business looked up to. Suddenly people started to reevaulate Travis' work, and he became an integral part of the new folk music movement. Travis continued playing the electric guitar, but he started recording solo albums of electric guitar performances of traditional songs, and became known as one of the great exponents of country guitar, as well as one of the great songwriters, with his "Dark as a Dungeon" in particular, another song from "Folk Songs of the Hills", becoming a country standard. Tennessee Ernie Ford, meanwhile, went on to a career as a presenter of TV variety shows, and while he continued making records, none of them had the success, either artistically or commercially, of "Sixteen Tons". But you only need to make one classic like that per career for your career to be worthwhile.

Welcome to the seventh and final in the Pledge Week series of episodes, putting up old bonus episodes posted to my Patreon in an attempt to encourage more subscriptions. If you like this, consider subscribing to the Patreon at http://patreon.com/join/andrewhickey . I’m glad to say that this pledge week has been successful enough that I may do another of these in a year or so. This one is about “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford, a record that was a huge influence on many, many artists in the mid fifties. —-more—- As we’re reaching the end of 1956, and are also now on the fiftieth episode of the podcast, I thought it worth while trying to fill in a few gaps in the year we’ve been covering. And one of those gaps is the song “Sixteen Tons”. We’ve mentioned this song a couple of times before — we talked during the episode on Bo Diddley about how much he liked the song, and it also came up in the episode on Johnny Cash, but because it’s not actually a rock and roll song as such we never looked at it in any more detail. But it’s a song that was a huge hit in 1956, and which influenced many rock and rollers, and so we should probably have a quick look at its history: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Sixteen Tons”] That’s the version of the song that became a hit in 1956, by Tennessee Ernie Ford, but it’s not the original version of the song. The song was originally written by Merle Travis, one of the greatest country guitarists of all time. Merle Travis is credited with the invention of “Travis picking”, a type of guitar playing where you play a bass line on the bottom two strings of the guitar while you play melody on the top two, with the melody syncopated as in ragtime — it’s a particular pattern that can be heard in everything from “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel to “Just Breathe” by Pearl Jam. Travis’ own playing was more complicated than the kind of music that now gets called “Travis picking”, as you can hear on, say, “Cannonball Rag”: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, “Cannonball Rag”] That owes a lot to ragtime and blues, not just to country music. While Travis is credited as the inventor of this style, he wasn’t actually its originator. It was actually invented by a black blues guitarist called Arnold Shultz, who lived in Travis’ home state of Kentucky. Shultz never made a record, but he taught the style to several other guitarists, including one called Kennedy Jones, who in turn taught it to many other guitarists — including Ike Everly, who we’ll be hearing more about in the second year of the main podcast. Travis spent the early part of his career as a fairly conventional country singer. He started off as one of the very first artists on Syd Nathan’s King Records, before King made its turn to the R&B for which it became better known, but then in 1946 he signed to Capitol Records, where he made country-pop records like “Divorce Me COD”: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, “Divorce Me COD”] But then Travis made an album called “Folk Songs of the Hills”, which was very different from anything else he’d recorded before. This was before the long-playing vinyl record, and so it was a box of four singles, all of which consisted just of Travis singing to his own acoustic guitar accompaniment. The songs were a mixture of the traditional folk songs that the title led you to expect: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, “John Henry”] and new songs written by Travis himself, mostly about the culture of the mining areas of Kentucky where he grew up. And “Sixteen Tons” was one of those. In its original version it started with a spoken introduction explaining the concept of “company scrip”, where someone could work for a company and be paid, not in cash that could be spent anywhere, but in tokens that could only be exchanged for goods sold by the company they worked for. This was an unfortunately common practice in the early and mid twentieth century, and those of you who’ve been following developments in cryptocurrencies and the big tech companies know that it’s making a return at the moment: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, “Sixteen Tons”] Travis’ recording was not particularly successful, and he went back to recording the honky tonk country records that he was successful with, but his career started to fade in the fifties. Until his friend Tennessee Ernie Ford, who had become nationally known thanks to some appearances on I Love Lucy, decided he wanted to record a new version of “Sixteen Tons” in 1956, a decade after Travis’ original version. Ford’s version is very, very, different from Travis’ original. It cuts out the spoken explanation, and where Travis’ version is a ragtime-influenced guitar track, Ford’s is taken at a much lower pitch, and it is dominated by clarinet and fingersnaps. It’s quite an astonishing arrangement, although it was soon imitated by all sorts of people, not least Peggy Lee in her version of “Fever”: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Sixteen Tons”] Ford’s recording became an instant classic, inspiring everyone from Johnny Cash to Bo Diddley to Tom Waits. It’s a perfect marriage of song, arrangement, and vocalist, and one of those records that perfectly encapsulates its time. It also revived the career of Merle Travis, who had stopped having any commercial success with his electric recordings, despite being a musician’s musician who every single other guitarist in the business looked up to. Suddenly people started to reevaulate Travis’ work, and he became an integral part of the new folk music movement. Travis continued playing the electric guitar, but he started recording solo albums of electric guitar performances of traditional songs, and became known as one of the great exponents of country guitar, as well as one of the great songwriters, with his “Dark as a Dungeon” in particular, another song from “Folk Songs of the Hills”, becoming a country standard. Tennessee Ernie Ford, meanwhile, went on to a career as a presenter of TV variety shows, and while he continued making records, none of them had the success, either artistically or commercially, of “Sixteen Tons”. But you only need to make one classic like that per career for your career to be worthwhile.

Episode fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Bye Bye Love" by The Everly Brotherss, and at the history of country close harmony. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Short Fat Fannie" by Larry Williams.  ----more----   Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no first-rate biographies of the Everly Brothers in print, at least in English (apparently there's a decent one in French, but I don't speak French well enough for that). Ike's Boys by Phyllis Karp is the only full-length bio,  and I relied on that in the absence of anything else, but it's been out of print for nearly thirty years, and is not worth the exorbitant price it goes for second-hand. How Nashville Became Music City by Michael Kosser has a good amount of information on the Bryants. The Everlypedia is a series of PDFs containing articles on anything related to the Everly Brothers, in alphabetical order. There are many, many cheap compilations of the Everly Brothers' early material available. I'd recommend this one, because as well as all the hits up to 1962 it has the complete Songs our Daddy Taught Us.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   Transcript [Intro: Ike Everly introducing the Everly Brothers] We've talked before about how vocal harmonies are no longer a big part of rock music, but were essential to it in the fifties and sixties. But what we've not discussed is that there are multiple different types of harmony that we see in the music of that period. One, which we've already seen, is the vocal group sound -- the sound of doo-wop. There, there might be a lead singer, but everyone involved has their own important role to play, singing separate backing vocal lines that intertwine. One singer will be taking a bass melody, another will be singing a falsetto line, and so on. It's the sound of a collection of individual personalities, working together but to their own agendas. Another style which we're going to look at soon is the girl group sound. There you have a lead singer singing a line on her own, and two or three backing vocalists echoing lines on the chorus -- it's the sound of a couple of friends providing support for someone who's in trouble. The lead singer will sing her problems, and the friends will respond with something supportive. Then there's the style which Elvis used -- a single lead vocalist over a group of backing vocalists, mostly providing "oohs" and "aahs". The backing vocals here just work as another instrumental texture. But there's one style which would be as influential as any of these, and which was brought into rock and roll by a single act -- a duo who, more than anyone else in rock music, epitomised vocal harmony: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Bye Bye Love"] Don and Phil Everly were brought up in music. Their father, Ike Everly, had been a coalminer in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, but decided to quit coal mining and become a professional musician when he was trapped in his second cave-in, deciding he wasn't ever going to go through that a third time. He had learned a particular guitar style, which would later become known as "Travis picking" after its most famous exponent, Merle Travis -- though Travis himself usually referred to it as "Muhlenberg picking". Travis and Ike Everly knew each other, and it was Ike Everly, and Ike's friend Mose Rager, who taught Travis how to play in that style, which they had learned from another friend, Kennedy Jones, who in turn learned it from a black country-blues player named Arnold Schultz, who had invented the style: [Excerpt, Ike Everly, "Blue Smoke"] Ike Everly was widely regarded as one of the greatest country guitarists of all time, and his "Ike Everly's Rag" was later recorded by Merle Travis and Joe Maphis: [Excerpt: Merle Travis and Joe Maphis, "Ike Everly's Rag"] But while Ike Everly was known as a country player, Don Everly would always later claim that deep down Ike was a blues man. He played country because that was what the audiences wanted to hear, but his first love was the blues. But even when playing country, he wasn't just playing the kind of music that was becoming popular at the time, but he was also playing the old Appalachian folk songs, and teaching them to his sons. He would play songs like "Who's Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?", which was most famously recorded by Woody Guthrie: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?"] The Everly family travelled all over the South and Midwest, moving between radio stations on which Ike Everly would get himself shows. As they grew old enough, his two sons, Don and Phil, would join him, as would his wife, though Margaret Everly was more of a manager than a performer. Don soon became good enough that he got his own fifteen-minute show, performing as "Little Donnie", as well as performing with his family. The Everly family would perform their show live, first thing in the morning -- they were playing country music and so they were supposed to be playing for the farmers, and their show began at 5AM, with the young boys heading off to school, still in the dark, after the show had finished. The radio show continued for many years, and the boys developed all sorts of tricks for keeping an audience entertained, which would stand them in good stead in future years. One thing they used to do was to have both brothers and their father play the same guitar simultaneously, with Phil fretting the bass notes, Ike Everly playing those notes, and Don playing lead on the top strings. I've not found a recording of them doing that together, but some footage does exist of them doing this with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his TV show -- Ford, of course, being someone whose biggest hit had been written by Ike Everly's old friend Merle Travis: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Everly Brothers, "Rattlesnake Daddy"] That kind of trick was fairly common among country acts at the time -- Buck Owens and Don Rich would do pretty much the same act together in the 1960s, and like the Everlys would play fairly straightforward blues licks while doing it. But while Ike Everly was primarily an instrumentalist, his sons would become known mostly as singers. People often, incorrectly, describe the Everly Brothers as singing "bluegrass harmonies". This is understandable, as bluegrass music comes from Kentucky, and does often have close harmonies in it. But the Everlys were actually singing in a style that was around for years before Bill Monroe started performing the music that would become known as bluegrass. There was a whole tradition of close harmony in country music that is usually dated back to the 1920s. The first people to really popularise it were a duo who were known as "Mac and Bob" -- Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner. The two men met in Kentucky, at the Kentucky School for the Blind, where they were both studying music, in 1916. They started singing close harmony together in the early 1920s, and while they sang in the overly-enunciated way that was popular at the time, you can hear the roots of the Everlys' style in their harmonies: [Excerpt: McFarland and Gardner, "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine"] The style is known as "close harmony" because the singers are singing notes that are close to each other in the scale, and it was the foundation of country vocal harmonies. Usually in this style, there are two singers, singing about a third apart. The lower singer will sing the melody, while the higher singer will harmonise, following the melody line closely. This style of harmony was particularly suited to the vocal blend you can get from siblings, who tend to have extremely similar voices -- and if done well it can sound like one voice harmonising with itself. And so from the 1930s on there were a lot of brother acts who performed this kind of music. One duo who the Everlys would often point to as a particular influence was the Bailes Brothers: [Excerpt: the Bailes Brothers, "Oh So Many Years"] But at the time the Everly Brothers were coming up, there was one duo, more than any other, who were immensely popular in the close harmony style -- the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "Midnight Special"] The Louvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, were cousins of John D. Loudermilk, whose "Sittin' in the Balcony" we heard in the Eddie Cochran episode a few weeks ago. They were country and gospel singers, who are nowadays probably sadly best known for the cover of their album "Satan is Real", which often makes those Internet listicles about the most ridiculous album covers. But in the mid fifties, they were one of the most popular groups in country music, and influenced everyone -- they were particular favourites of Elvis, and regular performers on the Grand Ole Opry. Their style was a model for the Everlys, but sadly so was their personal relationship. Ira and Charlie never got on, and would often get into fights on stage, and the same was true of the Everly Brothers. In 1970, Phil Everly said "We've only ever had one argument. It's lasted twenty-five years", and that argument would continue for the rest of their lives. There were various explanations offered for their enmity over the years, ranging from them vying to be their father's favourite, to Don resenting Phil's sweeter voice upstaging him -- he was once quoted as saying "I've been a has-been since I was ten". But fundamentally the two brothers were just too different in everything from temperament to politics -- Don is a liberal Democrat, while Phil was a conservative Republican -- and their views on how life should be lived. It seems most likely that two such different people resented being forced into constant proximity with each other, and reacted against it. And so the Everlys became another of those sibling rivalries that have recurred throughout rock and roll history. But despite their personal differences, they had a vocal blend that was possibly even better than that of the Louvins, if that's possible. But talent on its own doesn't necessarily bring success, and for a while it looked like the Everlys were going to be washed up before the brothers got out of their teens. While they had some success with their radio show, by 1955 there was much less of a market for live music on the radio -- it was much cheaper for the radio stations to employ DJs to play records, now that the legal ban on broadcasting recordings had been lifted. The Everly family's radio show ended, and both Ike and Margaret got jobs cutting hair, while encouraging their sons in their music career. After a few months of this, Margaret decided she was going to move the boys to Nashville, to try to get them a record deal, while Ike remained in nearby Knoxville working as a barber. While the family had not had much success in the music industry, they had made contacts with several people, and Chet Atkins, in particular, was an admirer, not only of Ike Everly's guitar playing, but of his barbering skills as well -- according to at least one account I've read, Atkins was a regular customer of Ike's. Atkins seems to have been, at first, mostly interested in Don Everly as a songwriter and maybe a solo performer -- he carried out some correspondence with Don while Don was still in school, and got Kitty Wells, one of the biggest country stars of the fifties, to record one of Don's songs, "Thou Shalt Not Steal", when Don was only sixteen: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, "Thou Shalt Not Steal"] That became a top twenty country hit, and Don looked like he might be on his way to a successful career, especially after another of his songs, "Here We Are Again", was recorded by Anita Carter of the famous Carter family: [Excerpt: Anita Carter, "Here We Are Again"] But Margaret Everly, the Everlys' mother and the person who seemed to have the ambition that drove them, didn't want Don to be a solo star -- she wanted the two brothers to be equal in every way, and would make sure they wore the same clothes, had the same toys growing up, and so on. She took Don's royalties from songwriting, and used them to get both brothers Musicians' union cards -- in the same way, when Don had had his own radio show, Margaret had made Don give Phil half of his five-dollar fee. So solo stardom was never going to be in Don Everly's future. Margaret wanted the Everly Brothers to be a successful duo, and that was that. Chet Atkins was going to help *both* her sons. Atkins got them a deal with Columbia Records in 1956 for a single, "Keep A-Lovin' Me", written by Don: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Keep A-Lovin' Me"] That record flopped, and the Everlys were later very dismissive of it -- Phil said of the two songs on that single "they were stinko, boy! Really stinko!" Columbia weren't interested in putting out anything else by the Everlys, and quickly dropped them. Part of the reason was that they were signed as a country act, but they already wanted to do more, and in particular to incorporate more influence from the rhythm and blues music they were listening to. Don worshipped Hank Williams, and Phil loved Lefty Frizzell, but they both also adored Bo Diddley, and were obsessed with his style. Don, in particular -- who was the more accomplished instrumentalist of the two, and who unlike Phil would play rhythm guitar on their records -- wanted to learn how Diddley played guitar, and would spend a lot of time with Chet Atkins, who taught him how to play in the open tunings Diddley used, and some of the rhythms he was playing with. Despite the brothers' lack of success on Columbia, Atkins still had faith in them, and he got in touch with his friend Wesley Rose, who was the president of Acuff-Rose publishing, the biggest music publishing company in Nashville at the time. Rose made a deal with the brothers. If they would sign to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, and if they'd agree to record only Acuff-Rose songs, he would look after their career and get them a record deal. They agreed, and Rose got them signed to Cadence Records, a mid-sized indie label whose biggest star at the time was Andy Williams. The first single they recorded for Cadence was a song that had been rejected by thirty other artists before it was passed on to the Everlys as a last resort. "Bye Bye Love" was written by the husband and wife team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who had been writing for a decade, for people such as Carl Smith and Moon Mullican. Their first hit had come in 1948, with "Country Boy", a song which Little Jimmy Dickens took to number seven on the country charts: [Excerpt: Little Jimmy Dickens, "Country Boy"] But they had not had much chart success after that, though they'd placed songs with various Nashville-based country singers. They were virtual unknowns, and their most recent song, "Bye Bye Love", had been written for a duo called Johnny and Jack. They hadn't been interested, so the Bryants had passed the song along to their friend Chet Atkins, who had tried to record it with Porter Wagoner, who had recorded other songs by the Bryants, like "Tryin' to Forget the Blues": [Excerpt: Porter Wagoner, "Tryin' to Forget the Blues"] But when Atkins took the song into the studio, he decided it wasn't strong enough for Wagoner. Atkins wanted to change a few chords, and Boudleaux Bryant told him that if the song wasn't strong enough as it was, he just shouldn't record it at all. But while the song might not have been strong enough for a big country star like Porter Wagoner, it was strong enough for Chet Atkins' new proteges, who were, after all, hardly going to have a big hit. So Atkins took the multiply-rejected song in for the duo to record as their first single for Cadence. In one of those coincidences that seems too good to be true, Ike Everly was Boudleaux Bryant's barber, and had been bragging to him for years about how talented his sons were, but Bryant had just dismissed this -- around Nashville, everyone is a major talent, or their son or daughter or husband or wife is. Two things happened to change the rather mediocre song into a classic that would change the face of popular music. The first was, simply, the brothers' harmonies. They had by this point developed an intuitive understanding of each other's voices, and a superb musicality. It's interesting to listen to the very first take of the song: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Bye Bye Love (take 1)"] That's Don singing the low lead and Phil taking the high harmony. Now, if you're familiar with the finished record, you can tell that what Phil's singing there isn't the closer harmony part he ended up singing on the final version. There are some note choices there that he decided against for the final record. But what you can tell is that they are instinctively great harmony singers. It's not the harmony part that would become famous, but it's a *good* one in its own right. The second thing is that they changed the song from the rather sedate country song the Bryants had come up with, radically rearranging it. Don had written a song called "Give Me a Future", which he'd intended to be in the Bo Diddley style, and one can hear something of Diddley's rhythm in the stop-start guitar part: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Give Me a Future"] Don took that guitar part, and attached it to the Bryants' song, and with the help of Chet Atkins' lead guitar fills turned it into something quite new -- a record with a rockabilly feel, but with country close harmony vocals: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Bye Bye Love"] The brothers were, at first, worried because almost as soon as it came out, a cover version by Webb Pierce, one of the biggest names in country music, came out: [Excerpt: Webb Pierce, "Bye Bye Love"] But they were surprised to discover that while Pierce's version did chart -- reaching the top ten in the country charts -- it was nowhere near as successful as their own version, which went to number one on the country charts and number two in pop, and charted on the R&B charts as well. After that success, the Bryants wrote a string of hits for the brothers, a run of classics starting with "Wake Up Little Suzie", a song which was banned on many stations because it suggested impropriety -- even though, listening to the lyrics, it very clearly states that no impropriety has gone on, and indeed that the protagonist is horrified at the suggestion that it might have: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Wake Up Little Suzie"] These records would usually incorporate some of Don's Bo Diddley influence, while remaining firmly in the country end of rock and roll. The Bryants also started to give the brothers ballads like "Devoted to You" and "All I Have to Do is Dream", which while they still deal with adolescent concerns, have a sweetness and melody to them quite unlike anything else that was being recorded by rock and roll artists of the time. After the first single, everything else that the Bryants wrote for the Everlys was tailored specifically to them -- Boudleaux Bryant, who would attend more of the sessions, would have long conversations with the brothers and try to write songs that fit with their lives and musical tastes, as well as fitting them to their voices. One of the things that's very noticeable about interviews with the brothers is that they both tend to credit Boudleaux alone with having written the songs that he co-wrote with his wife, even though everything suggests that the Bryants were a true partnership, and both have solo credits for songs that are stylistically indistinguishable from those written as a team. Whether this is pure sexism, or it's just because Boudleaux is the one who used to demo the songs for them and so they think of him as the primary author, is hard to tell -- probably a combination. This was also a perception that Boudleaux Bryant encouraged. While Felice was the person who had originally decided to go into songwriting, and was the one who came up with most of the ideas, Boudleaux was only interested in making money -- and he'd often sneak off to write songs by himself so he would get all the money rather than have to share it with his wife. Boudleaux would also on occasion be given incomplete songs by friends like Atkins, and finish them up with Felice -- but only Boudleaux and the original writer would get their names on it. The result was that Boudleaux got the credit from people around him, even when they knew better. One of my sources for this episode is an interview with the Bryants' son, Dane, and at one point in that interview he says "Now, lots of times I will say, 'My father.' I mean Dad and Mom". As the Everly brothers disagreed about almost everything, they of course disagreed about the quality of the material that the Bryants were bringing them. Phil Everly was always utterly unstinting in his praise of them, saying that the Bryants' songs were some of the best songs ever written. Don, on the other hand, while he definitely appreciated material like "All I Have to Do is Dream", wasn't so keen on their writing in general, mostly because it dealt primarily with adolescent concerns. He thought that the material the brothers were writing for themselves -- though still immature, as one would expect from people who were still in their teens at the start of their career -- was aiming at a greater emotional maturity than the material the Bryants wrote. And on the evidence of their first album, that's certainly true. The first album is, like many albums of the time, a patchy affair. It pulls together the hit singles the brothers had already released, together with a bunch of rather mediocre cover versions of then-current hits. Those cover versions tend to support Don's repeated claims that the brothers were as interested in R&B and blues as in country -- apart from a version of "Be-Bop-A-Lula", all the covers are of R&B hits of the time -- two by Little Richard, two by Ray Charles, and one by the relatively obscure blues singer Titus Turner. But among those songs, there are also a handful of Don Everly originals, and one in particular, "I Wonder if I Care as Much", is quite an astonishing piece of songwriting: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "I Wonder If I Care As Much"] Don's songs were often B-sides – that one was the B-side to “Bye Bye Love” – and to my mind they're often rather more interesting than the A-sides. While that first album is rather patchy, the second album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, is a minor revelation, and one of the pillars on which the Everly Brothers' artistic reputation rests. It's been suggested that the album was done as a way of getting back at the record company for some slight or other, by making a record that was completely uncommercial. That might be the case, but I don't think so -- and if it was, it was a gesture that backfired magnificently, as it's still, sixty years on, a consistent seller. Songs Our Daddy Taught Us is precisely what it sounds like -- an album consisting of songs the brothers had been taught by their father. It's a mixture of Appalachian folk songs and country standards, performed by the brothers accompanied just by Don's acoustic guitar and Floyd Chance on upright bass: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] It's quite possibly the most artistically satisfying album made in the fifties by a rock and roll act, and it's had such an influence that as recently as 2013 Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and the jazz-pop singer Norah Jones recorded an album, Foreverly, that's just a cover version of the whole album: [Excerpt: Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, “Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] So as the 1950s drew to a close, the Everly Brothers were on top of the world. They'd had a run of classic singles, and they'd just released one of the greatest albums of all time. But there was trouble ahead, and when we pick up on their career again, we'll see exactly how wrong things could go for them.  

Episode fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Bye Bye Love” by The Everly Brotherss, and at the history of country close harmony. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Short Fat Fannie” by Larry Williams.  —-more—-   Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no first-rate biographies of the Everly Brothers in print, at least in English (apparently there’s a decent one in French, but I don’t speak French well enough for that). Ike’s Boys by Phyllis Karp is the only full-length bio,  and I relied on that in the absence of anything else, but it’s been out of print for nearly thirty years, and is not worth the exorbitant price it goes for second-hand. How Nashville Became Music City by Michael Kosser has a good amount of information on the Bryants. The Everlypedia is a series of PDFs containing articles on anything related to the Everly Brothers, in alphabetical order. There are many, many cheap compilations of the Everly Brothers’ early material available. I’d recommend this one, because as well as all the hits up to 1962 it has the complete Songs our Daddy Taught Us.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   Transcript [Intro: Ike Everly introducing the Everly Brothers] We’ve talked before about how vocal harmonies are no longer a big part of rock music, but were essential to it in the fifties and sixties. But what we’ve not discussed is that there are multiple different types of harmony that we see in the music of that period. One, which we’ve already seen, is the vocal group sound — the sound of doo-wop. There, there might be a lead singer, but everyone involved has their own important role to play, singing separate backing vocal lines that intertwine. One singer will be taking a bass melody, another will be singing a falsetto line, and so on. It’s the sound of a collection of individual personalities, working together but to their own agendas. Another style which we’re going to look at soon is the girl group sound. There you have a lead singer singing a line on her own, and two or three backing vocalists echoing lines on the chorus — it’s the sound of a couple of friends providing support for someone who’s in trouble. The lead singer will sing her problems, and the friends will respond with something supportive. Then there’s the style which Elvis used — a single lead vocalist over a group of backing vocalists, mostly providing “oohs” and “aahs”. The backing vocals here just work as another instrumental texture. But there’s one style which would be as influential as any of these, and which was brought into rock and roll by a single act — a duo who, more than anyone else in rock music, epitomised vocal harmony: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] Don and Phil Everly were brought up in music. Their father, Ike Everly, had been a coalminer in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, but decided to quit coal mining and become a professional musician when he was trapped in his second cave-in, deciding he wasn’t ever going to go through that a third time. He had learned a particular guitar style, which would later become known as “Travis picking” after its most famous exponent, Merle Travis — though Travis himself usually referred to it as “Muhlenberg picking”. Travis and Ike Everly knew each other, and it was Ike Everly, and Ike’s friend Mose Rager, who taught Travis how to play in that style, which they had learned from another friend, Kennedy Jones, who in turn learned it from a black country-blues player named Arnold Schultz, who had invented the style: [Excerpt, Ike Everly, “Blue Smoke”] Ike Everly was widely regarded as one of the greatest country guitarists of all time, and his “Ike Everly’s Rag” was later recorded by Merle Travis and Joe Maphis: [Excerpt: Merle Travis and Joe Maphis, “Ike Everly’s Rag”] But while Ike Everly was known as a country player, Don Everly would always later claim that deep down Ike was a blues man. He played country because that was what the audiences wanted to hear, but his first love was the blues. But even when playing country, he wasn’t just playing the kind of music that was becoming popular at the time, but he was also playing the old Appalachian folk songs, and teaching them to his sons. He would play songs like “Who’s Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”, which was most famously recorded by Woody Guthrie: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] The Everly family travelled all over the South and Midwest, moving between radio stations on which Ike Everly would get himself shows. As they grew old enough, his two sons, Don and Phil, would join him, as would his wife, though Margaret Everly was more of a manager than a performer. Don soon became good enough that he got his own fifteen-minute show, performing as “Little Donnie”, as well as performing with his family. The Everly family would perform their show live, first thing in the morning — they were playing country music and so they were supposed to be playing for the farmers, and their show began at 5AM, with the young boys heading off to school, still in the dark, after the show had finished. The radio show continued for many years, and the boys developed all sorts of tricks for keeping an audience entertained, which would stand them in good stead in future years. One thing they used to do was to have both brothers and their father play the same guitar simultaneously, with Phil fretting the bass notes, Ike Everly playing those notes, and Don playing lead on the top strings. I’ve not found a recording of them doing that together, but some footage does exist of them doing this with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his TV show — Ford, of course, being someone whose biggest hit had been written by Ike Everly’s old friend Merle Travis: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Everly Brothers, “Rattlesnake Daddy”] That kind of trick was fairly common among country acts at the time — Buck Owens and Don Rich would do pretty much the same act together in the 1960s, and like the Everlys would play fairly straightforward blues licks while doing it. But while Ike Everly was primarily an instrumentalist, his sons would become known mostly as singers. People often, incorrectly, describe the Everly Brothers as singing “bluegrass harmonies”. This is understandable, as bluegrass music comes from Kentucky, and does often have close harmonies in it. But the Everlys were actually singing in a style that was around for years before Bill Monroe started performing the music that would become known as bluegrass. There was a whole tradition of close harmony in country music that is usually dated back to the 1920s. The first people to really popularise it were a duo who were known as “Mac and Bob” — Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner. The two men met in Kentucky, at the Kentucky School for the Blind, where they were both studying music, in 1916. They started singing close harmony together in the early 1920s, and while they sang in the overly-enunciated way that was popular at the time, you can hear the roots of the Everlys’ style in their harmonies: [Excerpt: McFarland and Gardner, “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine”] The style is known as “close harmony” because the singers are singing notes that are close to each other in the scale, and it was the foundation of country vocal harmonies. Usually in this style, there are two singers, singing about a third apart. The lower singer will sing the melody, while the higher singer will harmonise, following the melody line closely. This style of harmony was particularly suited to the vocal blend you can get from siblings, who tend to have extremely similar voices — and if done well it can sound like one voice harmonising with itself. And so from the 1930s on there were a lot of brother acts who performed this kind of music. One duo who the Everlys would often point to as a particular influence was the Bailes Brothers: [Excerpt: the Bailes Brothers, “Oh So Many Years”] But at the time the Everly Brothers were coming up, there was one duo, more than any other, who were immensely popular in the close harmony style — the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “Midnight Special”] The Louvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, were cousins of John D. Loudermilk, whose “Sittin’ in the Balcony” we heard in the Eddie Cochran episode a few weeks ago. They were country and gospel singers, who are nowadays probably sadly best known for the cover of their album “Satan is Real”, which often makes those Internet listicles about the most ridiculous album covers. But in the mid fifties, they were one of the most popular groups in country music, and influenced everyone — they were particular favourites of Elvis, and regular performers on the Grand Ole Opry. Their style was a model for the Everlys, but sadly so was their personal relationship. Ira and Charlie never got on, and would often get into fights on stage, and the same was true of the Everly Brothers. In 1970, Phil Everly said “We’ve only ever had one argument. It’s lasted twenty-five years”, and that argument would continue for the rest of their lives. There were various explanations offered for their enmity over the years, ranging from them vying to be their father’s favourite, to Don resenting Phil’s sweeter voice upstaging him — he was once quoted as saying “I’ve been a has-been since I was ten”. But fundamentally the two brothers were just too different in everything from temperament to politics — Don is a liberal Democrat, while Phil was a conservative Republican — and their views on how life should be lived. It seems most likely that two such different people resented being forced into constant proximity with each other, and reacted against it. And so the Everlys became another of those sibling rivalries that have recurred throughout rock and roll history. But despite their personal differences, they had a vocal blend that was possibly even better than that of the Louvins, if that’s possible. But talent on its own doesn’t necessarily bring success, and for a while it looked like the Everlys were going to be washed up before the brothers got out of their teens. While they had some success with their radio show, by 1955 there was much less of a market for live music on the radio — it was much cheaper for the radio stations to employ DJs to play records, now that the legal ban on broadcasting recordings had been lifted. The Everly family’s radio show ended, and both Ike and Margaret got jobs cutting hair, while encouraging their sons in their music career. After a few months of this, Margaret decided she was going to move the boys to Nashville, to try to get them a record deal, while Ike remained in nearby Knoxville working as a barber. While the family had not had much success in the music industry, they had made contacts with several people, and Chet Atkins, in particular, was an admirer, not only of Ike Everly’s guitar playing, but of his barbering skills as well — according to at least one account I’ve read, Atkins was a regular customer of Ike’s. Atkins seems to have been, at first, mostly interested in Don Everly as a songwriter and maybe a solo performer — he carried out some correspondence with Don while Don was still in school, and got Kitty Wells, one of the biggest country stars of the fifties, to record one of Don’s songs, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”, when Don was only sixteen: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”] That became a top twenty country hit, and Don looked like he might be on his way to a successful career, especially after another of his songs, “Here We Are Again”, was recorded by Anita Carter of the famous Carter family: [Excerpt: Anita Carter, “Here We Are Again”] But Margaret Everly, the Everlys’ mother and the person who seemed to have the ambition that drove them, didn’t want Don to be a solo star — she wanted the two brothers to be equal in every way, and would make sure they wore the same clothes, had the same toys growing up, and so on. She took Don’s royalties from songwriting, and used them to get both brothers Musicians’ union cards — in the same way, when Don had had his own radio show, Margaret had made Don give Phil half of his five-dollar fee. So solo stardom was never going to be in Don Everly’s future. Margaret wanted the Everly Brothers to be a successful duo, and that was that. Chet Atkins was going to help *both* her sons. Atkins got them a deal with Columbia Records in 1956 for a single, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”, written by Don: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”] That record flopped, and the Everlys were later very dismissive of it — Phil said of the two songs on that single “they were stinko, boy! Really stinko!” Columbia weren’t interested in putting out anything else by the Everlys, and quickly dropped them. Part of the reason was that they were signed as a country act, but they already wanted to do more, and in particular to incorporate more influence from the rhythm and blues music they were listening to. Don worshipped Hank Williams, and Phil loved Lefty Frizzell, but they both also adored Bo Diddley, and were obsessed with his style. Don, in particular — who was the more accomplished instrumentalist of the two, and who unlike Phil would play rhythm guitar on their records — wanted to learn how Diddley played guitar, and would spend a lot of time with Chet Atkins, who taught him how to play in the open tunings Diddley used, and some of the rhythms he was playing with. Despite the brothers’ lack of success on Columbia, Atkins still had faith in them, and he got in touch with his friend Wesley Rose, who was the president of Acuff-Rose publishing, the biggest music publishing company in Nashville at the time. Rose made a deal with the brothers. If they would sign to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, and if they’d agree to record only Acuff-Rose songs, he would look after their career and get them a record deal. They agreed, and Rose got them signed to Cadence Records, a mid-sized indie label whose biggest star at the time was Andy Williams. The first single they recorded for Cadence was a song that had been rejected by thirty other artists before it was passed on to the Everlys as a last resort. “Bye Bye Love” was written by the husband and wife team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who had been writing for a decade, for people such as Carl Smith and Moon Mullican. Their first hit had come in 1948, with “Country Boy”, a song which Little Jimmy Dickens took to number seven on the country charts: [Excerpt: Little Jimmy Dickens, “Country Boy”] But they had not had much chart success after that, though they’d placed songs with various Nashville-based country singers. They were virtual unknowns, and their most recent song, “Bye Bye Love”, had been written for a duo called Johnny and Jack. They hadn’t been interested, so the Bryants had passed the song along to their friend Chet Atkins, who had tried to record it with Porter Wagoner, who had recorded other songs by the Bryants, like “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”: [Excerpt: Porter Wagoner, “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”] But when Atkins took the song into the studio, he decided it wasn’t strong enough for Wagoner. Atkins wanted to change a few chords, and Boudleaux Bryant told him that if the song wasn’t strong enough as it was, he just shouldn’t record it at all. But while the song might not have been strong enough for a big country star like Porter Wagoner, it was strong enough for Chet Atkins’ new proteges, who were, after all, hardly going to have a big hit. So Atkins took the multiply-rejected song in for the duo to record as their first single for Cadence. In one of those coincidences that seems too good to be true, Ike Everly was Boudleaux Bryant’s barber, and had been bragging to him for years about how talented his sons were, but Bryant had just dismissed this — around Nashville, everyone is a major talent, or their son or daughter or husband or wife is. Two things happened to change the rather mediocre song into a classic that would change the face of popular music. The first was, simply, the brothers’ harmonies. They had by this point developed an intuitive understanding of each other’s voices, and a superb musicality. It’s interesting to listen to the very first take of the song: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love (take 1)”] That’s Don singing the low lead and Phil taking the high harmony. Now, if you’re familiar with the finished record, you can tell that what Phil’s singing there isn’t the closer harmony part he ended up singing on the final version. There are some note choices there that he decided against for the final record. But what you can tell is that they are instinctively great harmony singers. It’s not the harmony part that would become famous, but it’s a *good* one in its own right. The second thing is that they changed the song from the rather sedate country song the Bryants had come up with, radically rearranging it. Don had written a song called “Give Me a Future”, which he’d intended to be in the Bo Diddley style, and one can hear something of Diddley’s rhythm in the stop-start guitar part: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Give Me a Future”] Don took that guitar part, and attached it to the Bryants’ song, and with the help of Chet Atkins’ lead guitar fills turned it into something quite new — a record with a rockabilly feel, but with country close harmony vocals: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] The brothers were, at first, worried because almost as soon as it came out, a cover version by Webb Pierce, one of the biggest names in country music, came out: [Excerpt: Webb Pierce, “Bye Bye Love”] But they were surprised to discover that while Pierce’s version did chart — reaching the top ten in the country charts — it was nowhere near as successful as their own version, which went to number one on the country charts and number two in pop, and charted on the R&B charts as well. After that success, the Bryants wrote a string of hits for the brothers, a run of classics starting with “Wake Up Little Suzie”, a song which was banned on many stations because it suggested impropriety — even though, listening to the lyrics, it very clearly states that no impropriety has gone on, and indeed that the protagonist is horrified at the suggestion that it might have: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Wake Up Little Suzie”] These records would usually incorporate some of Don’s Bo Diddley influence, while remaining firmly in the country end of rock and roll. The Bryants also started to give the brothers ballads like “Devoted to You” and “All I Have to Do is Dream”, which while they still deal with adolescent concerns, have a sweetness and melody to them quite unlike anything else that was being recorded by rock and roll artists of the time. After the first single, everything else that the Bryants wrote for the Everlys was tailored specifically to them — Boudleaux Bryant, who would attend more of the sessions, would have long conversations with the brothers and try to write songs that fit with their lives and musical tastes, as well as fitting them to their voices. One of the things that’s very noticeable about interviews with the brothers is that they both tend to credit Boudleaux alone with having written the songs that he co-wrote with his wife, even though everything suggests that the Bryants were a true partnership, and both have solo credits for songs that are stylistically indistinguishable from those written as a team. Whether this is pure sexism, or it’s just because Boudleaux is the one who used to demo the songs for them and so they think of him as the primary author, is hard to tell — probably a combination. This was also a perception that Boudleaux Bryant encouraged. While Felice was the person who had originally decided to go into songwriting, and was the one who came up with most of the ideas, Boudleaux was only interested in making money — and he’d often sneak off to write songs by himself so he would get all the money rather than have to share it with his wife. Boudleaux would also on occasion be given incomplete songs by friends like Atkins, and finish them up with Felice — but only Boudleaux and the original writer would get their names on it. The result was that Boudleaux got the credit from people around him, even when they knew better. One of my sources for this episode is an interview with the Bryants’ son, Dane, and at one point in that interview he says “Now, lots of times I will say, ‘My father.’ I mean Dad and Mom”. As the Everly brothers disagreed about almost everything, they of course disagreed about the quality of the material that the Bryants were bringing them. Phil Everly was always utterly unstinting in his praise of them, saying that the Bryants’ songs were some of the best songs ever written. Don, on the other hand, while he definitely appreciated material like “All I Have to Do is Dream”, wasn’t so keen on their writing in general, mostly because it dealt primarily with adolescent concerns. He thought that the material the brothers were writing for themselves — though still immature, as one would expect from people who were still in their teens at the start of their career — was aiming at a greater emotional maturity than the material the Bryants wrote. And on the evidence of their first album, that’s certainly true. The first album is, like many albums of the time, a patchy affair. It pulls together the hit singles the brothers had already released, together with a bunch of rather mediocre cover versions of then-current hits. Those cover versions tend to support Don’s repeated claims that the brothers were as interested in R&B and blues as in country — apart from a version of “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, all the covers are of R&B hits of the time — two by Little Richard, two by Ray Charles, and one by the relatively obscure blues singer Titus Turner. But among those songs, there are also a handful of Don Everly originals, and one in particular, “I Wonder if I Care as Much”, is quite an astonishing piece of songwriting: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “I Wonder If I Care As Much”] Don’s songs were often B-sides – that one was the B-side to “Bye Bye Love” – and to my mind they’re often rather more interesting than the A-sides. While that first album is rather patchy, the second album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, is a minor revelation, and one of the pillars on which the Everly Brothers’ artistic reputation rests. It’s been suggested that the album was done as a way of getting back at the record company for some slight or other, by making a record that was completely uncommercial. That might be the case, but I don’t think so — and if it was, it was a gesture that backfired magnificently, as it’s still, sixty years on, a consistent seller. Songs Our Daddy Taught Us is precisely what it sounds like — an album consisting of songs the brothers had been taught by their father. It’s a mixture of Appalachian folk songs and country standards, performed by the brothers accompanied just by Don’s acoustic guitar and Floyd Chance on upright bass: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] It’s quite possibly the most artistically satisfying album made in the fifties by a rock and roll act, and it’s had such an influence that as recently as 2013 Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and the jazz-pop singer Norah Jones recorded an album, Foreverly, that’s just a cover version of the whole album: [Excerpt: Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] So as the 1950s drew to a close, the Everly Brothers were on top of the world. They’d had a run of classic singles, and they’d just released one of the greatest albums of all time. But there was trouble ahead, and when we pick up on their career again, we’ll see exactly how wrong things could go for them.  

Episode fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Bye Bye Love” by The Everly Brotherss, and at the history of country close harmony. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Short Fat Fannie” by Larry Williams.  —-more—-   Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no first-rate biographies of the Everly Brothers in print, at least in English (apparently there’s a decent one in French, but I don’t speak French well enough for that). Ike’s Boys by Phyllis Karp is the only full-length bio,  and I relied on that in the absence of anything else, but it’s been out of print for nearly thirty years, and is not worth the exorbitant price it goes for second-hand. How Nashville Became Music City by Michael Kosser has a good amount of information on the Bryants. The Everlypedia is a series of PDFs containing articles on anything related to the Everly Brothers, in alphabetical order. There are many, many cheap compilations of the Everly Brothers’ early material available. I’d recommend this one, because as well as all the hits up to 1962 it has the complete Songs our Daddy Taught Us.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   Transcript [Intro: Ike Everly introducing the Everly Brothers] We’ve talked before about how vocal harmonies are no longer a big part of rock music, but were essential to it in the fifties and sixties. But what we’ve not discussed is that there are multiple different types of harmony that we see in the music of that period. One, which we’ve already seen, is the vocal group sound — the sound of doo-wop. There, there might be a lead singer, but everyone involved has their own important role to play, singing separate backing vocal lines that intertwine. One singer will be taking a bass melody, another will be singing a falsetto line, and so on. It’s the sound of a collection of individual personalities, working together but to their own agendas. Another style which we’re going to look at soon is the girl group sound. There you have a lead singer singing a line on her own, and two or three backing vocalists echoing lines on the chorus — it’s the sound of a couple of friends providing support for someone who’s in trouble. The lead singer will sing her problems, and the friends will respond with something supportive. Then there’s the style which Elvis used — a single lead vocalist over a group of backing vocalists, mostly providing “oohs” and “aahs”. The backing vocals here just work as another instrumental texture. But there’s one style which would be as influential as any of these, and which was brought into rock and roll by a single act — a duo who, more than anyone else in rock music, epitomised vocal harmony: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] Don and Phil Everly were brought up in music. Their father, Ike Everly, had been a coalminer in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, but decided to quit coal mining and become a professional musician when he was trapped in his second cave-in, deciding he wasn’t ever going to go through that a third time. He had learned a particular guitar style, which would later become known as “Travis picking” after its most famous exponent, Merle Travis — though Travis himself usually referred to it as “Muhlenberg picking”. Travis and Ike Everly knew each other, and it was Ike Everly, and Ike’s friend Mose Rager, who taught Travis how to play in that style, which they had learned from another friend, Kennedy Jones, who in turn learned it from a black country-blues player named Arnold Schultz, who had invented the style: [Excerpt, Ike Everly, “Blue Smoke”] Ike Everly was widely regarded as one of the greatest country guitarists of all time, and his “Ike Everly’s Rag” was later recorded by Merle Travis and Joe Maphis: [Excerpt: Merle Travis and Joe Maphis, “Ike Everly’s Rag”] But while Ike Everly was known as a country player, Don Everly would always later claim that deep down Ike was a blues man. He played country because that was what the audiences wanted to hear, but his first love was the blues. But even when playing country, he wasn’t just playing the kind of music that was becoming popular at the time, but he was also playing the old Appalachian folk songs, and teaching them to his sons. He would play songs like “Who’s Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”, which was most famously recorded by Woody Guthrie: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] The Everly family travelled all over the South and Midwest, moving between radio stations on which Ike Everly would get himself shows. As they grew old enough, his two sons, Don and Phil, would join him, as would his wife, though Margaret Everly was more of a manager than a performer. Don soon became good enough that he got his own fifteen-minute show, performing as “Little Donnie”, as well as performing with his family. The Everly family would perform their show live, first thing in the morning — they were playing country music and so they were supposed to be playing for the farmers, and their show began at 5AM, with the young boys heading off to school, still in the dark, after the show had finished. The radio show continued for many years, and the boys developed all sorts of tricks for keeping an audience entertained, which would stand them in good stead in future years. One thing they used to do was to have both brothers and their father play the same guitar simultaneously, with Phil fretting the bass notes, Ike Everly playing those notes, and Don playing lead on the top strings. I’ve not found a recording of them doing that together, but some footage does exist of them doing this with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his TV show — Ford, of course, being someone whose biggest hit had been written by Ike Everly’s old friend Merle Travis: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Everly Brothers, “Rattlesnake Daddy”] That kind of trick was fairly common among country acts at the time — Buck Owens and Don Rich would do pretty much the same act together in the 1960s, and like the Everlys would play fairly straightforward blues licks while doing it. But while Ike Everly was primarily an instrumentalist, his sons would become known mostly as singers. People often, incorrectly, describe the Everly Brothers as singing “bluegrass harmonies”. This is understandable, as bluegrass music comes from Kentucky, and does often have close harmonies in it. But the Everlys were actually singing in a style that was around for years before Bill Monroe started performing the music that would become known as bluegrass. There was a whole tradition of close harmony in country music that is usually dated back to the 1920s. The first people to really popularise it were a duo who were known as “Mac and Bob” — Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner. The two men met in Kentucky, at the Kentucky School for the Blind, where they were both studying music, in 1916. They started singing close harmony together in the early 1920s, and while they sang in the overly-enunciated way that was popular at the time, you can hear the roots of the Everlys’ style in their harmonies: [Excerpt: McFarland and Gardner, “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine”] The style is known as “close harmony” because the singers are singing notes that are close to each other in the scale, and it was the foundation of country vocal harmonies. Usually in this style, there are two singers, singing about a third apart. The lower singer will sing the melody, while the higher singer will harmonise, following the melody line closely. This style of harmony was particularly suited to the vocal blend you can get from siblings, who tend to have extremely similar voices — and if done well it can sound like one voice harmonising with itself. And so from the 1930s on there were a lot of brother acts who performed this kind of music. One duo who the Everlys would often point to as a particular influence was the Bailes Brothers: [Excerpt: the Bailes Brothers, “Oh So Many Years”] But at the time the Everly Brothers were coming up, there was one duo, more than any other, who were immensely popular in the close harmony style — the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “Midnight Special”] The Louvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, were cousins of John D. Loudermilk, whose “Sittin’ in the Balcony” we heard in the Eddie Cochran episode a few weeks ago. They were country and gospel singers, who are nowadays probably sadly best known for the cover of their album “Satan is Real”, which often makes those Internet listicles about the most ridiculous album covers. But in the mid fifties, they were one of the most popular groups in country music, and influenced everyone — they were particular favourites of Elvis, and regular performers on the Grand Ole Opry. Their style was a model for the Everlys, but sadly so was their personal relationship. Ira and Charlie never got on, and would often get into fights on stage, and the same was true of the Everly Brothers. In 1970, Phil Everly said “We’ve only ever had one argument. It’s lasted twenty-five years”, and that argument would continue for the rest of their lives. There were various explanations offered for their enmity over the years, ranging from them vying to be their father’s favourite, to Don resenting Phil’s sweeter voice upstaging him — he was once quoted as saying “I’ve been a has-been since I was ten”. But fundamentally the two brothers were just too different in everything from temperament to politics — Don is a liberal Democrat, while Phil was a conservative Republican — and their views on how life should be lived. It seems most likely that two such different people resented being forced into constant proximity with each other, and reacted against it. And so the Everlys became another of those sibling rivalries that have recurred throughout rock and roll history. But despite their personal differences, they had a vocal blend that was possibly even better than that of the Louvins, if that’s possible. But talent on its own doesn’t necessarily bring success, and for a while it looked like the Everlys were going to be washed up before the brothers got out of their teens. While they had some success with their radio show, by 1955 there was much less of a market for live music on the radio — it was much cheaper for the radio stations to employ DJs to play records, now that the legal ban on broadcasting recordings had been lifted. The Everly family’s radio show ended, and both Ike and Margaret got jobs cutting hair, while encouraging their sons in their music career. After a few months of this, Margaret decided she was going to move the boys to Nashville, to try to get them a record deal, while Ike remained in nearby Knoxville working as a barber. While the family had not had much success in the music industry, they had made contacts with several people, and Chet Atkins, in particular, was an admirer, not only of Ike Everly’s guitar playing, but of his barbering skills as well — according to at least one account I’ve read, Atkins was a regular customer of Ike’s. Atkins seems to have been, at first, mostly interested in Don Everly as a songwriter and maybe a solo performer — he carried out some correspondence with Don while Don was still in school, and got Kitty Wells, one of the biggest country stars of the fifties, to record one of Don’s songs, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”, when Don was only sixteen: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”] That became a top twenty country hit, and Don looked like he might be on his way to a successful career, especially after another of his songs, “Here We Are Again”, was recorded by Anita Carter of the famous Carter family: [Excerpt: Anita Carter, “Here We Are Again”] But Margaret Everly, the Everlys’ mother and the person who seemed to have the ambition that drove them, didn’t want Don to be a solo star — she wanted the two brothers to be equal in every way, and would make sure they wore the same clothes, had the same toys growing up, and so on. She took Don’s royalties from songwriting, and used them to get both brothers Musicians’ union cards — in the same way, when Don had had his own radio show, Margaret had made Don give Phil half of his five-dollar fee. So solo stardom was never going to be in Don Everly’s future. Margaret wanted the Everly Brothers to be a successful duo, and that was that. Chet Atkins was going to help *both* her sons. Atkins got them a deal with Columbia Records in 1956 for a single, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”, written by Don: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”] That record flopped, and the Everlys were later very dismissive of it — Phil said of the two songs on that single “they were stinko, boy! Really stinko!” Columbia weren’t interested in putting out anything else by the Everlys, and quickly dropped them. Part of the reason was that they were signed as a country act, but they already wanted to do more, and in particular to incorporate more influence from the rhythm and blues music they were listening to. Don worshipped Hank Williams, and Phil loved Lefty Frizzell, but they both also adored Bo Diddley, and were obsessed with his style. Don, in particular — who was the more accomplished instrumentalist of the two, and who unlike Phil would play rhythm guitar on their records — wanted to learn how Diddley played guitar, and would spend a lot of time with Chet Atkins, who taught him how to play in the open tunings Diddley used, and some of the rhythms he was playing with. Despite the brothers’ lack of success on Columbia, Atkins still had faith in them, and he got in touch with his friend Wesley Rose, who was the president of Acuff-Rose publishing, the biggest music publishing company in Nashville at the time. Rose made a deal with the brothers. If they would sign to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, and if they’d agree to record only Acuff-Rose songs, he would look after their career and get them a record deal. They agreed, and Rose got them signed to Cadence Records, a mid-sized indie label whose biggest star at the time was Andy Williams. The first single they recorded for Cadence was a song that had been rejected by thirty other artists before it was passed on to the Everlys as a last resort. “Bye Bye Love” was written by the husband and wife team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who had been writing for a decade, for people such as Carl Smith and Moon Mullican. Their first hit had come in 1948, with “Country Boy”, a song which Little Jimmy Dickens took to number seven on the country charts: [Excerpt: Little Jimmy Dickens, “Country Boy”] But they had not had much chart success after that, though they’d placed songs with various Nashville-based country singers. They were virtual unknowns, and their most recent song, “Bye Bye Love”, had been written for a duo called Johnny and Jack. They hadn’t been interested, so the Bryants had passed the song along to their friend Chet Atkins, who had tried to record it with Porter Wagoner, who had recorded other songs by the Bryants, like “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”: [Excerpt: Porter Wagoner, “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”] But when Atkins took the song into the studio, he decided it wasn’t strong enough for Wagoner. Atkins wanted to change a few chords, and Boudleaux Bryant told him that if the song wasn’t strong enough as it was, he just shouldn’t record it at all. But while the song might not have been strong enough for a big country star like Porter Wagoner, it was strong enough for Chet Atkins’ new proteges, who were, after all, hardly going to have a big hit. So Atkins took the multiply-rejected song in for the duo to record as their first single for Cadence. In one of those coincidences that seems too good to be true, Ike Everly was Boudleaux Bryant’s barber, and had been bragging to him for years about how talented his sons were, but Bryant had just dismissed this — around Nashville, everyone is a major talent, or their son or daughter or husband or wife is. Two things happened to change the rather mediocre song into a classic that would change the face of popular music. The first was, simply, the brothers’ harmonies. They had by this point developed an intuitive understanding of each other’s voices, and a superb musicality. It’s interesting to listen to the very first take of the song: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love (take 1)”] That’s Don singing the low lead and Phil taking the high harmony. Now, if you’re familiar with the finished record, you can tell that what Phil’s singing there isn’t the closer harmony part he ended up singing on the final version. There are some note choices there that he decided against for the final record. But what you can tell is that they are instinctively great harmony singers. It’s not the harmony part that would become famous, but it’s a *good* one in its own right. The second thing is that they changed the song from the rather sedate country song the Bryants had come up with, radically rearranging it. Don had written a song called “Give Me a Future”, which he’d intended to be in the Bo Diddley style, and one can hear something of Diddley’s rhythm in the stop-start guitar part: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Give Me a Future”] Don took that guitar part, and attached it to the Bryants’ song, and with the help of Chet Atkins’ lead guitar fills turned it into something quite new — a record with a rockabilly feel, but with country close harmony vocals: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] The brothers were, at first, worried because almost as soon as it came out, a cover version by Webb Pierce, one of the biggest names in country music, came out: [Excerpt: Webb Pierce, “Bye Bye Love”] But they were surprised to discover that while Pierce’s version did chart — reaching the top ten in the country charts — it was nowhere near as successful as their own version, which went to number one on the country charts and number two in pop, and charted on the R&B charts as well. After that success, the Bryants wrote a string of hits for the brothers, a run of classics starting with “Wake Up Little Suzie”, a song which was banned on many stations because it suggested impropriety — even though, listening to the lyrics, it very clearly states that no impropriety has gone on, and indeed that the protagonist is horrified at the suggestion that it might have: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Wake Up Little Suzie”] These records would usually incorporate some of Don’s Bo Diddley influence, while remaining firmly in the country end of rock and roll. The Bryants also started to give the brothers ballads like “Devoted to You” and “All I Have to Do is Dream”, which while they still deal with adolescent concerns, have a sweetness and melody to them quite unlike anything else that was being recorded by rock and roll artists of the time. After the first single, everything else that the Bryants wrote for the Everlys was tailored specifically to them — Boudleaux Bryant, who would attend more of the sessions, would have long conversations with the brothers and try to write songs that fit with their lives and musical tastes, as well as fitting them to their voices. One of the things that’s very noticeable about interviews with the brothers is that they both tend to credit Boudleaux alone with having written the songs that he co-wrote with his wife, even though everything suggests that the Bryants were a true partnership, and both have solo credits for songs that are stylistically indistinguishable from those written as a team. Whether this is pure sexism, or it’s just because Boudleaux is the one who used to demo the songs for them and so they think of him as the primary author, is hard to tell — probably a combination. This was also a perception that Boudleaux Bryant encouraged. While Felice was the person who had originally decided to go into songwriting, and was the one who came up with most of the ideas, Boudleaux was only interested in making money — and he’d often sneak off to write songs by himself so he would get all the money rather than have to share it with his wife. Boudleaux would also on occasion be given incomplete songs by friends like Atkins, and finish them up with Felice — but only Boudleaux and the original writer would get their names on it. The result was that Boudleaux got the credit from people around him, even when they knew better. One of my sources for this episode is an interview with the Bryants’ son, Dane, and at one point in that interview he says “Now, lots of times I will say, ‘My father.’ I mean Dad and Mom”. As the Everly brothers disagreed about almost everything, they of course disagreed about the quality of the material that the Bryants were bringing them. Phil Everly was always utterly unstinting in his praise of them, saying that the Bryants’ songs were some of the best songs ever written. Don, on the other hand, while he definitely appreciated material like “All I Have to Do is Dream”, wasn’t so keen on their writing in general, mostly because it dealt primarily with adolescent concerns. He thought that the material the brothers were writing for themselves — though still immature, as one would expect from people who were still in their teens at the start of their career — was aiming at a greater emotional maturity than the material the Bryants wrote. And on the evidence of their first album, that’s certainly true. The first album is, like many albums of the time, a patchy affair. It pulls together the hit singles the brothers had already released, together with a bunch of rather mediocre cover versions of then-current hits. Those cover versions tend to support Don’s repeated claims that the brothers were as interested in R&B and blues as in country — apart from a version of “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, all the covers are of R&B hits of the time — two by Little Richard, two by Ray Charles, and one by the relatively obscure blues singer Titus Turner. But among those songs, there are also a handful of Don Everly originals, and one in particular, “I Wonder if I Care as Much”, is quite an astonishing piece of songwriting: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “I Wonder If I Care As Much”] Don’s songs were often B-sides – that one was the B-side to “Bye Bye Love” – and to my mind they’re often rather more interesting than the A-sides. While that first album is rather patchy, the second album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, is a minor revelation, and one of the pillars on which the Everly Brothers’ artistic reputation rests. It’s been suggested that the album was done as a way of getting back at the record company for some slight or other, by making a record that was completely uncommercial. That might be the case, but I don’t think so — and if it was, it was a gesture that backfired magnificently, as it’s still, sixty years on, a consistent seller. Songs Our Daddy Taught Us is precisely what it sounds like — an album consisting of songs the brothers had been taught by their father. It’s a mixture of Appalachian folk songs and country standards, performed by the brothers accompanied just by Don’s acoustic guitar and Floyd Chance on upright bass: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] It’s quite possibly the most artistically satisfying album made in the fifties by a rock and roll act, and it’s had such an influence that as recently as 2013 Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and the jazz-pop singer Norah Jones recorded an album, Foreverly, that’s just a cover version of the whole album: [Excerpt: Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] So as the 1950s drew to a close, the Everly Brothers were on top of the world. They’d had a run of classic singles, and they’d just released one of the greatest albums of all time. But there was trouble ahead, and when we pick up on their career again, we’ll see exactly how wrong things could go for them.  

Steve Aoki presents his weekly podcast Aoki's House. This week is hosted by Kennedy Jones. www.steveaoki.com

Steve Aoki presents his weekly podcast Aoki's House. This week is hosted by Kennedy Jones. www.steveaoki.com

TRACKLIST : 1. LIL PUMP Gucci Gang 2. CARDI B Kodak Yellow 3. BAKA Live up to the name 4. QUALITY CONTROL feat QUAVO,TAKEOFF & OFFSET Too Hooty 5. GUCCI MANE feat CHRIS BROWN Tone it down 6. KHALID Young Dumb 7. CHEVY WOODS Alright 8. GUCCI MANE feat MIGOS I get the bag 9. MIGOS feat GUCCI MANE Slippery 10. KENNEDY JONES feat MIKE JONES & RIFF RAFF Club Goin 11. KID INK feat STARRAH No strings 12. 2 CHAINZ Trap Check 13. AD & SORRY JAYNARI feat KOOL JOHN Who dit 14. YO GOTTI & MIKE WILL MADE IT Dogg 15. CRIME MOB Knuck if you buck 16. JUICY J feat QUAVO & CHRIS BROWN Learnin ( remix ) 17. YO GOTTI ,MIKE WILL MADE-IT feat NICKI MINAJ Rake it up 18. KENDRICK LAMAR Humble to Maad city 19. FUTURE Zoom 20. FUTURE feat NICKI MINAJ You da baddest 21. LIL UZY VERT 444+222 22. TRAVIS SCOTT feat YOUNG THUG and QUAVO Pick up the phone 23. IMAJ dead présidents 24. BRYSON TILLER Money problems 25. RICH HOMIE QUAN Gamble 26. A BOOGIE WIT DA HOODIE Say a 27. KODAK BLACK feat FUTURE Conscience 28. LIL UZY VERT X 29. YO GOTTI Juive 30. YBN NAHMIR Rubbin off the paint 31. POST MALONE Rockstar 32. PREME Tango 33. ASAP FERG feat JUICY J Plain jane vs siob on my knob 34. KID INK Supersoaka 35. G EAZY feat CARDI B ASAP ROCKY and JERMAINE DUPRI No limit 36. RICK ROSS Jumping Shit 37. KODAK BLACK Transportin 38. CELLY CEL feat SAGE THE GEMINI Lit af 39. AD SORRY JAYNARI Out the hood 40. AMINE Slide 41. L.A LEAKERS feat WALE,ERIC BELLINGER & AD FaceTime 42. E-ROCK and CLAYTON WILLIAMS feat E-40 PROBLEM Just like that 43. FAB BOYZ Dip 44. TRAP BECKAM feat DJ PRETTY RICKY

Steve Aoki presents his weekly podcast Aoki's House. This week is presented by Kennedy Jones. www.steveaoki.com

Este es un podcast donde podrás escuchar todos mis remixes, edits, mashup y bootleg desde el comienzo. Follow: DJ VICJAN Soundcloud : http://bit.ly/1avPBjW Facebook : http://on.fb.me/15DEZvZ Twitter : http://bit.ly/13cDMMy VJPO Records Facebook: http://bit.ly/VJPOrecordsFB Twitter: http://bit.ly/VJPOrecordsTW Soundcloud: http://bit.ly/VJPOrecordsSC iTunes Podcast: MAKE SOME NOISE https://bit.ly/MakeSomeNoiseRadio

Steve Aoki presents his weekly podcast Aoki's House! This week is hosted by Kennedy Jones. www.steveaoki.com  

Wide Awake Stories is a new monthly radio show hosted by Insomniac’s editorial team. We shine a spotlight on the fans, the artists, the DJs, and all the vibrant and creative people who make this culture so unique. Community is the focus of this month’s show, so it’s only fitting that we bring you a fully stacked lineup. Our own Desiree Naranjo breaks down how Insomniac Cares is helping our festival communities, while Electric Family cofounder Drew Nilon comes through to chat about how artists are finding creative ways to give back. Moderators and admins from EDM Madness, Reddit and Insomniac Ravers talk about growing and protecting their very different online communities, and Brad and Dela from Moontribe share their unique stories about SoCal’s beloved 25-year desert institution. Kennedy Jones discusses the community-minded motivations behind his Never Not Gang in advance of his clothing drive in Downtown Los Angeles, and last but certainly not least, the one and only Nigel Ficke tells the tale of how he soothed a rowdy crowd at EDC Orlando 2012. Got a story you want to share? Hit us up at @Insomniacdotcom on Facebook and Twitter using #WideAwakeStories, or email us at editorial@insomniac.com. You can even leave a message on our Wide Awake Hotline: (310) 818-9406. We want to hear from you!

Kenny comes by and puts the G in Ginger. Kennedy Jones has spent most of his life around big bass music. After seeing great success with a collaborative Dubstep project, including a track signed to Ultra Records, Kennedy decided that the time was right for a solo project. Kennedy quickly became recognized as the artist to watch in 2013 and has kept up the pace in 2014 as he continues to gain support and fans that want more of his highly versatile productions and awe-inspiring live performances.

1. marshmello – SuMmeR2. Snails – King Is Back (feat. Big Ali)3. Calvin Harris – Outside (feat. Ellie Goudling) (marshmello Remix)4. Fresh Prince vs. Carnage & Zeke&Zoid – Fresh Prince of Mara (Twinz Beatz Bootleg)5. Proper Villains – Bust One (feat. Metric Man) (JumoDaddy Remix)6. Dyro – Foxtrot7. Julian Calor – To the Core (feat. Quilla)8. iiO – Rapture (LVNDSCAPE Remix)9. Skylar Grey – I Know You (Kaskade Remix)10. Zedd – I Want You to Know (feat. Selena Gomez) (Jake Liedo Remix)11. Sole Clemente – Earthquake12. Kill the Empire – Hit the Road Jack13. HEFF – Middle Fingers Up14. ZooFunktion & BLVCK PHVNTOM – Colosseum15. Eva Shaw – Moxie16. Nate Ruess – Nothing Without Love (BYNON Remix)17. Kryder – Percolator (feat. Cajmere)18. ATTLAS – ScarlettKennedy Jones Guest Mix1. Alphaville - Forever Young VS. Dimitri Vegas, Martin Garrix, Like Mike - Tremor (Original Mix) [Kennedy JonesMashup]2. Hook n Sling - Take You Higher Vs. Sandro Silva & Quintino - Epic (Original Mix) [Kennedy Jones Mashup]3. The Searchers - Love Potion Number 9 (Kennedy Jones Remix) 4. Kennedy Jones & ZAXX - Check This Out (Original Mix)5. Outhere Brothers - Boom Boom Boom (Kennedy Jones Remix)6. Dropkick Murphys - Shipping up to Boston (Kennedy Jones Remix)7. D-Jastic - Up To No Good (MAKJ Remix)8. The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army (Ookay Bootleg) VS. Bassjackers - Crackin (Martin Garrix Edit)9. Big Sean - IDFWU (Original Mix)10. Torro Torro - Front to the Back (Original Mix) 11. Halfway House - On Fire (Original Mix)12. Bon Jovi - Livin on a Prayer X Chuckie & Diamond Pistols ft. Hyper Crush - Bang (Kennedy Jones Mashup)13. Ceelo Green - Fu*k You 14. DVBBS - Raveology (Original Mix)15. TJR & Vinai - Bounce Generation (Original Mix)16. Henry Fong & D.O.D. - Bust Dem (Original Mix)17. Katy Perry - Roar (Kennedy Jones Remix)18. Tiga - Bugatti ft. Pusha T (Jauz Remix)19. Oiver Heldens - Melody (Original Mix)20. Kennedy Jones - DIP (Original Mix)21. Jacob Plant - Louder (Kennedy Jones Trap Remix)22. Afrojack & Martin Garrix - Turn Up The Speaker (Bear Sauce Trap Remix)23. Rae Sremmurd - No Type (Party Favor Remix)24. Kennedy Jones - Sinful (Original Mix)25. Borgeous and Dzeko and Torres - Tutankhamun (ILLcasso Remix)26. Rae Sremmurd - No Flex Zone (Original Mix)27. LOUDPVCK X GLADIATOR - Tony (Feat. Nipsey Hussle)28. Borgore & Sikdope - Unicorn Zombie Apocalypse (Kennedy Jones Trap Remix)29. ETC!ETC! - Supa Hot Fire (Original Mix) 30. Must Die - Hellcat (Snails Remix)31. Chainsmokers feat. SirenXX - Kanye (Ookay Remix)32. Sikdope - Summer Wine (Original Mix)33. Dirt Monkey & Tucker Kreway ft. Turner Jackson - Party Anthem (Original Mix)34. Datsik Feat. Mayor Apeshit - Katana (Original Mix)35. Calvin Harris - We'll Be Coming Back (Killsonik Remix)36. Elvis Crespo - Suavemente (Kennedy Jones Remix) 37. Flux Pavillion - I Can't Stop (Original Mix)38. Calvin Harris - You Used To Hold Me (Kennedy Jones Remix)

Happy New Year and welcome to Episode 12 of the EV Music podcast!! This month, EV Music's newest artist T-Walk provides an awesome guest mix that features tracks by some of today's hottest artists in the dance music scene. Be sure to check us out on Facebook of course visit Eventvibe.com for details on the hottest Electronic Music shows in San Diego and beyond. Mixed by T-Walk. T-Walk Info: Soundcloud.com/twalkproductions  Facebook.com/twalkproductions  Here's a few artists that we're bringing to San Diego this month with support by some of our EV Music DJ's. Visit Eventvibe.com for details and tickets! *** Kennedy Jones at Bassmnt - Thursday 01/15 *** Moguai at Bassmnt - Saturday 01/17 *** Bloody Beetroots at Bassmnt - Thursday 01/22 *** ATB at Bassmnt - Saturday 01/24 *** Paris Blohm at Bassmnt - Thursday 01/29 *** Sultan & Ned Shepard at Bassmnt - Saturday 01/31 *** Myon & Shane 54 at Bassmnt - Saturday 02/07 *** Audien at Bassmnt - Saturday 02/14 *** Benny Benassi at Wintervention - Saturday 02/15 *** Paul Van Dyk at Bassmnt - Saturday 02/19 *** Steve Aoki, Headhunterz at SOMA - Saturday 02/20 Tracklist: 1 - Oldskool Totem - Alvaro, Van Dalen vs. Tom Staar, Ansolo (T-Walk Edit)  2 - Happy Ending - Joe Garston, Andrew Farr (Froxic Remix)  3 - Now or Never Iris - Tritonal ft. Phoebe Ryan vs. Audien (T-Walk Edit)  4 - Strangers - Seven Lions ft. Tove Lo (Paris Blohm Remix)  5 - Wayfarer Behinds - Audien vs. Paris Blohm ft. Taylr Renee (T-Walk Edit)  6 - How You Love Me - 3LAU ft. Bright Lights (T-Walk Remix) [FREE DOWNLOAD]  7 - Hello - Lazy Rich, Sue Cho, Porter Robinson (Original Mix)  8 - Reason - Hook N Sling, NERVO (Sick Individuals Remix)  9 - Breaking Free x Surge x Countdown - T-Walk vs. Clockwork, Wynter Gordon vs. Hardwell, MAKJ (T-Walk Edit)  10 - KNAS - Steve Angello vs. Deficio (Henry Fong Edit)  11 - ASAP - T-Walk (Original Mix) [EV MUSIC]  12 - Save The Infected - Tom Fall & Aruna vs. Toxxic (Paris Blohm Edit)  13 - Wicked When I Rock - Digital Lab, Ape Drums vs. Moguai (T-Walk Edit)  14 - 3 Percent - Kronic, Krunk! (T-Walk DJ Edit)  15 - Vex - T-Walk (Original Mix) [FREE DOWNLOAD]  16 - Yales Makes It Bounce - Janiper Beauchamp x Waverokr vs. Dillon Francis ft. Major Lazer & Stylo G (T-Walk Edit)  17 - Ready - Deorro, MAKJ (Original Mix)  18 - Howling - Darth & Vader (Toxxic Remix)  19 - Tsunami - DVBBS & Borgeous (Audio Rock's Minty Mix)  20 - Clash - BM & EvM Vs. T-Walk (Original Mix) [FREE DOWNLOAD]  Download and Subscribe to the EV Music podcast today! Enjoy!
Visit us on Facebook - www.facebook.com/EVMusicOfficial

1. Ca$h out - Juice (ft lil durk)2. Jackal - chinchilla3. Hella hoes (thugli remix) - a$ap mob4. After life - BLVCK X BVNDITS5. Overdose - BEAZYTYMES6. OUIJA - HOUNDS7. Unreleased8. DRIPPIN (illy noise remix) - KID INK9. Persistence - TOPKI10. DANNY GLOVER (jayCeeOh & ruen remix) - YOUNG THUG11. POPE - JUICY J 12. RORSHACH - HOUNDS X METAHESH 13. TRILLY - woogie14. Vanguard - SLANDER15. KING SHIT (NSTY REMIX)16. Take my hand - GAMEFACE17. The vapors (trayfee remix)18. ITH (blvck rmx)19. ROLLIN - FILTHY DISCO20. A milli (FILTHY DISCO RMX) Maci Delaghetto is an aspiring Trap/House DJ from Detroit. In the fast growing & cut throat scene in Detroit, this 19 year old has been climbing the ranks locally by spinning festivals & events alongside some of the biggest names in the game such as Brillz, Ookay, Kennedy Jones, Krewella, Milk N cookies, The M Machine, Carnage, Diplo, David Heartbreak, Datsik, Protohype, Caked Up, MiMOSA, Cazette, TWRK, DVNK, Adventure Club, Ana Sia, DVBBS, ETC!ETC!, Bro Safari, Wax Motif, CRNKN, Funtcase, dillon francis, grandtheft, Borgeous, MartyParty & many others. She also played at Spring Awakening in Chicago, Life in Color, & Trick or Beats festival in Miami. She is currently working on an EP with MartyParty & will release sometime next year. Follow up with her mixes & tracks on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/macidelaghetto Social Media: www.instagram.com/yng.meisie www.twitter.com/macidelaghetto www.facebook.com/macidelaghettomusic

01. Borgeous & Shaun Frank - This Could Be Love (feat. Delaney Jane) 02. Jay Cosmic & Husman - Universe 03. Kennedy Jones vs Ben Gold & KhoMha - Escape the Sinffull Asylum (W&W Mashup) 04. John Martin - Love Louder (Style Of Eye Remix) 05. Mark Sixma & Kill The Buzz - Rise Up 06. Danny Avila & Merzo - BOOM! (Original Mix) 07. Tritonal - Anchor (Lush & Simon Remix) 08. MoTi vs Dzeko & Torres - Ganja 09. Axwell ^ Ingrosso - Can’t Hold Us Down 10. Most Wanted: Riggi & Piros - Crank 11. Merk & Kremont ft. Bongom - Now Or Never 12. Smash of the Week: Van Halen - Jump (Audien Remix) 13. Knife Party - 404 14. Joe Garston - Prelude In JG 15. Jack U - Take U There (TJR rmx) 16. David Gravell - Kaiju 17. Roger Shah presents Sunlounger & JES - Glitter And Gold (Antillas & Dankann Remix) 18. Armin van Buuren & Andrew Rayel - EIFORYA (Bass Modulators Remix)

Jay L Audio Podcast #17 "W4RRIOR$ ONLY" featuring new music from Obsologic, Roniit, Trivecta, Benasis, Kennedy Jones, Havana Brown, Virtual Riot, Astronaut, Spag Heddy, Dewey Dough, Dannic, Bright Lights, Pegboard Nerds, X-TOF, KSHMR, MAKJ, Lil Jon, Max Styler, Damien Anthony, Disco Fries, Aylen, Tiesto, American Authors, Raider, Sophia Schoenau, Oliver Smith, Bombs Away, MOTi, Denny White, Borgore, Sikdope.

Jay L Audio Podcast #12 "The Jay Offensive" featuring new music from DVBBS, Borgeous, Maestro Chives, Krunk!, Fracture, Kryder, Showtek, Justin Prime, Matthew Koma, Disco Fries, Icona Pop, Blasterjaxx, Ahzee, Ellie Goulding, Big Sean, Gazzo, Razor, Guido, Shakira, Rihanna, Aluna George, Tchami, Vaski, The Neighborhood, Miley Cyrus, Cedric Gervais, Galantis, Kaskade, Bass On Fire, Sub Focus, Gold Top, Kennedy Jones, Drake, 4Korners, The Chainsmokers, Creaky Jackals, Sikdope, Alvaro, Joey Dale.

Playlist: 01.FLOSSTRADAMUS & DJ SLIINK tes me 02.KNIFE PARTY lrad CRNKN remix vs THREE 6 MAFIA I'd rather K.LASS bootleg 03.A-TRAK ft GTA landline 04.BIG CHOCOLATE ft 2CHAINZ blue milk K.LASS bootleg 05.BRILLZ acid trippin 06.DJ SLIINK stop me now 07.FLOSSTRADAMUS & DJ SLIINK crowd control 08.GTA & HENRIX & DIGITAL LAB hit it LADY BEE remix VS B.O.B. we still K.LASS bootleg 09.KENNEDY JONES came to party 10.NICKY ROMERO symphonica BARE remix vs Crush On You K.LASS bootleg 11.PEACHES burst UZ remix 12.PORTER ROBINSON say my name AYLEN remix 13.SPEKPTA make peace not war CALVERTRON mix 14.ZOMBOY here to stay STATIK LINK remix 15.ADVENTURE CLUB retrocity LOUDPVCK remix vs TWISTA gucci louie K.LASS bootleg 16.TNGHT acrylics 17.ALEX METRIC rave weapon UZ remix 18.MAJOR LAZER jah no partial YELLOW CLAW & YUNG FELIX Remix 19.RUSTIE triadzz vs CAM'RON & LIL WAYNE suck it or not K.LASS bootleg

The CreatorKnuckle ChildrenDirt Off Your ShoulderJay-ZTurn UpGent & JawnsBirthday Song2 ChainzCame To PartyKennedy JonesLove SosaChief KeefI Don't RattleKLASH EDITStill In This BitchB.O.B.Pour It UpRihannaThrow Some D'sRich BoyLocked Out Of HeavenBruno MarsAll I Do Is WinDJ KhaledFemales WelcomedTrinidad JamesCliqueKanye WestStay FlyThree 6 MafiaSimon SaysPharoahe Monchhttp://cdn1.mixcrate.com/audio/4/0/409743-V1pduffr.mp3