"
At the time, in the field that we flopped into, the artists wrote and performed all of their own material,” Felice recalled. “Then, after a while, the road got to them. They couldn’t think, they couldn’t doodle around on the front porch with a guitar, they couldn’t stroll through the woods and get inspired. So Boudleaux and I were the first people who came to Nashville who didn’t do anything but write. We were the factory."
What do the songs
Love Hurts,
Rocky Top,
Bye Bye Love, and
Wake Up Little Susie have in common? Why, they were all written by
Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, of course! Perhaps best known for the hits they penned for the
Everly Brothers, The
Bryants were an American husband and wife songwriting duo whose compositions, mostly country music, are estimated to have been on hundreds of millions of records sold. Let's get to know them a bit better, shall we?
The pair met and fell in love in 1945 in a Milwaukee hotel, and ran away together only five days later. Felice - née Matilda Genevieve Scaduto but called Felice by her husband -
recalls meeting Boudleaux: "I had dreamed of Boudleaux when I was 8 years old. When this man was walking toward me I recognized him right away. The only thing that was wrong was that he didn't have a beard. Although he grew one for me later. In the dream we were dancing to our song. Only it was
our song."
Among the hits they wrote for the Everly Brothers were
All I Have To Do Is Dream,
Bird Dog,
Devoted To You,
Problems, and
Like Strangers.
Boudleaux had
this to say of their success as songwriters: “Unless one feels driven to compose and at the same time has all the instincts of a Mississippi riverboat gambler, he should never seek songwriting as a profession. Unless you know in your heart that you’re great, feel in your bones that you’re lucky and think in your soul that God just might let you get away with it, pick something more certain, like chasing the white whale or eradicating the common housefly. We didn’t have the benefit of such sage advice. Now it’s too late to back up. We made it. Sometimes it pays to be ignorant.”
Phil Everly
said of them, "[They] had the far-reaching thought process that goes behind writing. It would be inner-soul searching and stuff. As silly as it sounds and as trite as it sounds, there’s still a little piece of everybody’s heart in it—some little twist, some little phrase in `All I Have To Do Is Dream.’ They influenced everyone they met."
Selected versions of a few of their tunes:
Rocky Top:
Everly Brothers |
Crystal Gale |
Dolly Parton |
Chet Atkins |
Roy Clark (on Sesame Street)
Love Hurts:
Nazareth |
Graham Parson & Emmylou Harris |
Roy Orbison
Country Boy:
Little Jimmy Dickens
Take A Message To Mary:
The Everly Brothers
Mexico:
Bob Moore
Raining In My Heart:
Buddy Holly |
Leo Sayer |
Don McLean
My Last Date:
Skeeter Davis
Hey Joe (not to be confused with the other
Hey Joe):
Carl Smith |
Frankie Lane
Let's Think About Living:
Bob Luman
Blue Boy:
Jim Reeves
Come Live With Me:
Roy Clark
Richest Man (In The World):
Eddy Arnold
Have A Good Time:
Tony Bennett
Full List Of Songs for the completist.
They are members of
The Nashville Songwriters Foundation,
The Songwriters Hall Of Fame,
The Country Music Hall Of Fame, and The Rockabilly Hall of Fame (linked above).
I think your Gram Parsons/Emmylou Harris link is borked. How about this?
posted by marxchivist at 8:16 PM on December 19, 2010