APRIL, 2026
HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW
ELECTRONIC EDITION: Now free to email subscribers and supported by tasteful, music-oriented advertising with a unique news-format approach.
A monthly guide to early rock, blues, country, folk, and traditional jazz in the Seattle area and beyond.
Editor and Publisher: Doug Bright
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Editor's Note: Links to the books and albums mentioned in this issue come from my participation in the Amazon Associates affiliate program, which enables me to earn commissions on the products I recommend when readers buy them through this website. The links represent my judgment of the most relevant and reasonably priced musical packages available. Heritage Music Review does not collect, store, or share confidential information generated by its readers' purchases. Enjoy!
CONTENTS—april, 2026
Part 3:
NEW BIOGRAPHY EXAMINES THE FACTORS BEHIND THE EVERLY BROTHERS' "BLOOD HARMONY"
CHECKIN' OUT THE SOUNDS: April Music CALENDAR (next message)
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PART 3: NEW BIOGRAPHY EXAMINES THE FACTORS BEHIND THE EVERLY BROTHERS' "BLOOD HARMONY"
By Doug Bright
Summary of Parts 1-2:
"The Everly Brothers have long mattered to me," biographer Barry Mazor writes in the introduction to is new book. "Their music has been part of my life at every stage." Mazor's new work from long-respected book publisher Da Capo is entitled BLOOD HARMONY: The Everly Brothers Story.
Ike Everly, Don and Phil's father, had grown up laboring in the coal mines of his native Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. The work was hard and dangerous, and the pay was subsistence level, but fortunately, he found an alternative, picking guitar and singing with his brother Charlie.
In 1929 Ike, Charlie, and a third Everly sibling formed a working trio and took off for Chicago but didn't accomplish much more, so Ike returned home. His next chance at success came in 1932 with a five-piece country band, yielding a radio spot on WGBF in Evansville, Indiana. He considered it his first real job.
The most significant aspect of his subsequent return home was a relationship with Margaret Eva Embry, whom he married on August 15, 1935. Don was born February 1, 1937, and only six weeks later, they moved to Chicago.
The Windy City was the home of the National Barn Dance, a country music show emanating from 50,000-watt WLS. Although Ike Everly was never a part of the regular cast of artists like Gene Autry, he had appeared on the station's affiliated road show, and his more sophisticated, pop-oriented brand of country was a good match for the Barn Dance's style. "It would be his appearances in the rowdy honky-tonks along Madison Street in the Chicago Loop that began to bring him attention," Mazor elaborates.
Phil Everly was born in 1939, and his father's career took a step forward that year with a regular spot on another Chicago station, WJJD. In 1943 the family found a new home in Shenandoah, Iowa. They had traveled there on recommendations from some of Ike's musical contacts, and as a result, he was hired as a staff musician by the area's most prominent radio station, KMA.
When the whole family appeared on the station's Christmas show in 1946, Nine-year-old Don sang "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" and seven-year-old Phil sang "Silent Night". By 1949 Ike had his own daily show.
He would sometimes bring his oldest son, now age twelve, onto the show for spot appearances, but eventually Don was given his own Saturday-morning time slot. It paid him $5 a show.
"The Ike Everly Family show was born in late summer 1950," Mazor writes. "A full half-hour show illustrates how far things had come along for Don at thirteen and Phil at eleven. Their voices and their singing had clearly grown together, more squawky declarative and higher-pitched than they will sound five years later on records, but the basic duet elements are in place."
Although the Everlys lived fairly comfortably most of the year, summers were difficult. Daytime performers at KMA experienced seasonal layoffs since the farmers who constituted their primary audience were busy working their fields, not sitting indoors listening to the radio. To make matters worse, KMA, like many local broadcasters, was increasingly focused on growing a TV audience and replacing live radio acts with disc jockeys.
Meanwhile, Knoxville, Tennessee was becoming a Mecca for country music talent under the auspices of supermarket owner Cas Walker and the chain of stores he promoted over a number of regional stations on his Farm and Home Hour show. "We put everything on the roof of a Chevrolet," Margaret Everly remembered, "and we drove into Knoxville and went up to ask Cas Walker for a job, and he hired us."
"The Everly Family's on-air appearances in Knoxville were just an extension of what they'd been doing all along," Barry Mazor observes. "It was designed to be a country show, but frictions were developing." Don and Phil were listening to Nashville's 50,000-watt rhythm-and-blues station, WLAC, and taking an increased interest in the sound of black vocal groups like the Clovers and the Drifters with impassioned lead vocalists, close background harmony, and an infectious backbeat. "Sometimes it didn't please the sponsor," Ike recalled in a 1958 interview.
The conflict finally came to a head in mid-1954 when Cas Walker fired the Everlys and canceled their show. With regard to his two sons, Ike reflects, a parting of the ways was inevitable. "Rock and roll was just coming in," he elaborates, "and we saw the writing on the wall. We knew it was time for them to be on their own."
With their musical career abruptly ended, Ike and Margaret Everly were forced to reinvent themselves, going back to the classroom right along with their sons, and both became hair stylists. "Business was meager," Mazor summarizes. "Ike did some time working construction in Indiana, sending cash home monthly. None of them could see that everything was about to change."
The change came about through Ike's continued correspondence with his old friend from Kentucky, Merle Travis, who was by now a regular on the Grand Ole Opry. Travis had begun talking up Ike's fingerpicking skills to a rising young guitar phenomenon named Chet Atkins, who was running a song publishing company in Nashville called Athens Music. They met in person when Atkins came to Knoxville to play the Tennessee Valley Fair, and Ike said, "Chet, I got two boys that I think are pretty good. Do you think you could do anything for them?"
Impressed by the two teenagers' intelligence and sophistication, Atkins gave them his phone number in Nashville and promised to listen to the songs Don was writing. Of all the songs Don sent him over the course of a year, Atkins was particularly impressed with one called "Thou Shalt Not Steal", which he successfully submitted to the reigning "Queen of Country Music," Kitty Wells.
Wells' heartfelt delivery and steel-guitar-driven backup gained the record all the success it deserved, lifting it to Number 14 on Billboard magazine's country chart. The success was all the evidence its young songwriter needed to prove he was on the right career path. Upon graduating from high school the following year, the principal asked him if he planned to go to college, and he immediately replied, "No, I'm going to Nashville."
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The development that cemented the family's decision to relocate was a letter that Margaret received from Mrs. Chet Atkins, informing her that he had managed to place another of Don's songs, "Here We Are Again". Recorded for RCA Victor in April 1955 by Anita Carter, arguably the best voice of legendary Carter Family, it was accurately characterized by Barry Mazor as "a purely impure honky-tonk ballad." "I vowed to myself I'll see you no more," her protagonist reflects, "but here we are again." It was a compelling waltz with Atkins contributing some tasty lead guitar work and Carter overdubbing an effective harmony part on the chorus, but it didn't fare nearly as well on the Billboard chart as Don's previous submission had done.
"We left Knoxville the day after I graduated from high school," Don recalls in Barry Mazor's book. The boys and their mother moved into an apartment in the nearby town of Madison, Tennessee, where many of the most notable country artists were living. "Margaret quickly found a department store manager in Nashville who'd been a neighbor back in Kentucky," Mazor relates, "and he hired her to cut hair; her pay was better instantly. For a brief period, Ike kept on cutting hair in Knoxville, then continued doing it in Madison."
"Before long," Mazor continues, "he and Margaret went off to Hammond, Indiana, where she cut more hair and he worked construction again. The boys lived alone in Madison now."
Through Chet Atkins, the Everlys met talent scout Troy Martin, and he, in turn, hooked them up with Don Law, who had launched such country superstars as Lefty Frizzell, Carl Smith, and Marty Robbins at Columbia Records. "Martin was experienced enough to know that picking up and establishing the Everlys as songwriters would be a lot more valuable if they were successful recording artists at the same time," Mazor explains. "He took Don and Phil to audition for Don Law, so they were signed."
Consequently, they had their first recording session on November 8, 1955, backed by Carl Smith's band. Four of Don's songs were recorded in only twenty minutes' time. "It played out so fast that they weren't entirely sure it had actually happened," Mazor elaborates, "with zero input from them on what it would sound like. Phil, nervous, sang sharp and knew it."
The following February, the Everly Brothers' first single was released consisting of two waltzes that Mazor describes as unremarkable. "Nerves, hurry, and minimal care seemed to have ruled the day," he summarizes. "They took a dub home from the session and played it and, heartbroken, knew instinctively it wasn't going to click. Two other songs recorded sounded more distinctive and smarter, but they weren't released at the time. When the first single tanked, the option on the Everlys' contract was not picked up."
With their recording contract amounting to nothing and checks from the song publisher spent, the Everlys found themselves in bare survival mode for a while. "I really did think we'd starve," Don recalled in a 1958 article in the short-lived Celebrity magazine. "Mom and Dad were living in Indiana, and they'd send us money pretty regular, but I guess we mismanaged. We never could make it last as long as we needed it."
"In 1956," Mazor relates, "Don was signed as a songwriter again, by Nashville's second-biggest publishing presence, Hill and Range. There was a small advance, very welcome at the time. Eddie Crandall, who was responsible for landing Buddy Holly his first Decca contract, volunteered to be the Everlys' manager. They got some live and local television appearances out of the relationship."
Through another volunteer manager, Don met a Nashville secretary named Mary Sue Ingraham, and Mazor points out, "Naíve and young was apparently an apt description for both of them. It wasn't long before they found, in the 1950s way of putting it, "they had to get married." Underage locally to marry without parental consent, and not wanting to go into all of this with their parents, they eloped to Georgia and made it legal on November 22, 1956."
"With money still hard to come by," Mazor continues, "Mary Sue moved into the Madison apartment, and Phil stayed there, too; her secretarial pay helped. Work was scarce. Phil gave up on attending high school and finished his diploma by correspondence course. By all accounts, they were ready to pack it all in and look for construction work alongside Ike."
Fortunately, their last stop on their way out of town was a visit to song publisher Hal Smith, and it turned out to be their big break. They had already been recommended to him, so he put them in touch with Wesley Rose, who managed the biggest publishing house in Nashville, Acuff-Rose.
Rose was impressed with their audition demo and contacted Archie Bleyer at Cadence Records in New York. "It just so happened I was starting a country label for Archie Bleyer," Rose recalls in Mazor's book. "The kids were leaving town, so I called Archie and said, I'd like to do a duet on your label."
When he learned who Rose was recommending, he initially said, "No, I don't like them. I had demos sent up here."
When Rose said he would put the Brothers on his own Hickory label if Bleyer refused, Bleyer was convinced that they were worth taking and signed them after all.
"They signed a three-year contract with Cadence on February 21, 1957," Mazor summarizes. "Wesley Rose became not just their working publisher, but their manager as well. The terms were pretty standard for the time, but no better than that."
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(This article will be continued in the next issue of Heritage Music Review. Your copy of Barry Mazor's book BLOOD HARMONY: The Everly Brothers Story is waiting for you at Phinney Books, 7405 Greenwood Avenue North in Seattle.
Phone: 206/297-2665. Web: www.phinneybooks.com).
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WHAT's IN STORE: News From The MUSICAL Marketplace
Find New Everly Brothers Biography At Phinney Books
"The Everly Brothers have long mattered to me," biographer Barry Mazor writes in the introduction to his new book. "Their music has been part of my life at every stage." The book is entitled BLOOD HARMONY: The Everly Brothers Story, and Your copy is waiting for you at Phinney Books in Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood.
Phinney Books
7405 Greenwood Avenue North
Web: www.phinneybooks.com
Phone: 206/297-2665
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Learn Songs From Historic Dylan Album At Dusty Strings
Dusty Strings Music Store and School in Seattle's Fremont district, long known for its array of fine stringed instruments and instructional workshops, is hosting local musician and educator Niall Ransford for four consecutive Tuesdays, beginning at 6:30 PM April 28th, on songs from one of the folk era's most significant albums, 1964's THE FREEWHEELIN' BOB DYLAN. "We'll work on Dylan's folk guitar style for fingerpickers and flatpickers of all levels, focusing on groove, feel, and supportive accompaniment," he elaborates on the Dusty Strings website. "We'll learn to play and sing "Blowin' In The Wind", "Don't Think Twice, It's All "Right?, "Girl From The North Country", "Corrina, Corrina" and more."
Dusty Strings Music Store and School
3406 Fremont Avenue North
Phone: 206/634-1662
Web: www.dustystrings.com
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On The Newsstand: Heritage Music Review
The print edition of Heritage Music Review is available by subscription for $15 per year plus $5 postage and on sale at the following Seattle newsstands and music venues:
FREMONT:
American Music: 4450 Fremont Avenue North
Dusty Strings Acoustic Music Shop: 3406 Fremont Avenue North
UNIVERSITY DISTRICT:
Bulldog News: 4208 University Way Northeast
GREENWOOD:
Phinney Books: 7405 Greenwood Avenue North
CAPITOL HILL:
Elliott Bay Book Company: 1521 10th Avenue
PIONEER SQUARE:
Emerald City Guitars: 83 South Washington Street
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