Don Everly, whose close-harmony singing with his brother, Phil, generated dreamy, chart-topping hits about teen romance in the late 1950s and early ‘60s and influenced groups from The Beatles to Simon and Garfunkel, has died, the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday. He was 84.
Everly, whose hits with his brother included “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Bye Bye Love,” died on Saturday at his home in Nashville, Tennessee, a family spokesperson told the newspaper. His brother died in 2014 at age 74.
The New York Times once described the brothers’ voices as “dipped in country sugar,” and it was said that “if they sing country in heaven, then there’s a good chance the angels sound like the Everly Brothers.”
“Perhaps even more powerfully than Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers melded country with the emerging sound of Fifties rock & roll,” said Rolling Stone magazine in putting the brothers at No. 33 on its list of the “100 Greatest Artists.”
The Everlys’ success faded in the 1960s amid the advent of guitar-driven rock, tension between the brothers and drug problems. They split up for 10 years but their harmonies proved timeless.
Isaac Donald “Don” Everly was born on Feb. 1, 1937, in Brownie, Kentucky, the son of two country musicians, Ike and Margaret Everly. Phil was born two years later and they were still boys when their musical careers began.
With Ike Everly on guitar, the family was a traveling act and had its own radio show, on which Don and his younger brother would sing between commercials for XIP rat poison and Foster’s 30-minute Wonder Corn and Callus Remover.
In the mid-’50s the brothers set out on their own and their breakthrough hit, “Bye Bye Love,” came in 1957, rising to No. 2 on the US Billboard pop charts. It was the first of many Everly tunes written by Boudleaux Bryant and his wife, Felice, including “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Devoted to You.”
“Wake Up Little Susie,” also released in 1957, was their first No. 1 hit. A song about two teenagers falling asleep at the drive-in theater and waking up long after curfew, it was banned from Boston radio stations for its sexually suggestive content.
As the 1960s advanced, the brothers grew increasingly out of step with the tumultuous era.
Their squeaky-clean image and innocent lyrics marked them as dated even as their sound carried on through The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, in particular, who recorded “Bye Bye Love” on their 1970 hit album, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
Personal problems took their toll as their popularity waned, with both brothers becoming addicted to speed and Don suffering a nervous breakdown and attempting suicide, according to Rolling Stone.
In 1973 the Everlys finally broke up during a concert — Don had taken the stage drunk — at Knott’s Berry Farm theme park in Buena Park, California.
