May, 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
Web: httpwhheritagemusicreview_com
Email: subscribe@heritagemusicreview.com
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—may, 2026
Part 4:
NEW BIOGRAPHY EXAMINES THE FACTORS BEHIND THE EVERLY BROTHERS' "BLOOD HARMONY"
WHAT's IN STORE: News From The Musical Marketplace
CHECKIN' OUT THE SOUNDS: May Music CALENDAR (next message)
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PART 4: NEW BIOGRAPHY EXAMINES THE FACTORS BEHIND THE EVERLY BROTHERS' "BLOOD HARMONY"
By Doug Bright
Summary of Parts 1-3:
"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 there, 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, Ike moved his family to Chicago. "It would be his appearances in the rowdy honky-tonks along Madison Street that began to bring him attention," Mazor elaborates.
Phil Everly was born in 1939, and 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, and 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."
By 1953 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."
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,
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.
Relocated to Nashville, the boys and their mother moved into an apartment in the nearby town of Madison, 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,
Smith, and
Marty Robbins
at Columbia ⠠⠗⠑⠉⠕⠗⠙⠎⠲
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. 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. "By all accounts," Mazor summarizes, "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."
"They signed a three-year contract with Cadence on February 21, 1957," Mazor relates. "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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The Everly Brothers' first recording session took place in Nashville on March 1, 1957. "The Everlys and Wesley Rose were already thinking "country," and it would be another Acuff-Rose song that they recorded in that first Cadence session that put the brothers on the map," Mazor elaborates. "It had been written by Nashville's first full-time professional songwriting duo, Felice and boudleaux Bryant, the previous year. They'd knocked it off in the course of a short car ride to the site in Hendersonville, Tennessee, north of Nashville, where they were having a new house built."
With regard to the historic studio session that yielded
"Bye Bye Love",
Don recalled, "Archie Bleyer and Wesley Rose and Boudleaux were there, and they sort of sang the song to us and we learned it right away. They asked us what we thought of it, and we said, "We can do it." I was probably more interested in doing my own material, but it isn't the kind of thing you pipe up and say when you're twenty years old."
"ALTHOUGH the boys were singing the song really well," Boudleaux Bryant adds in Mazor's book, "there seemed to be something missing. We were having a break and Don started strumming something that made me listen, and I said, That's it. Put it on the introduction."
The rhythmic guitar lick that grabbed Bryant's attention was based on a Bo Diddley-inspired riff Don used on the demo he had submitted to Cadence for his song
"Give Me A Futu6e".
With a high, unobtrusive chord harmony added by acoustic guitarist Ray Edenton, the eight-second intro that galvanized the pop world was complete. "The sound created in that studio moment would be central to defining the Everly Brothers as an ongoing outfit," Mazor summarizes. "It could be built on, and it would be, and it was not quite like anything anyone had done before."
With the Brothers still on the edge of starvation, Phil's perspective at the time was considerably more mundane. All he wanted out of the session was "a quick $64 to buy some hamburgers," he recalled. "I think we would've recorded anything."
Mazor adds, "When Archie asked Don what he'd do if this song turned out to be a hit, he replied that he really needed a new guitar case and some strings. He hadn't been able to afford even those."
With their record already gaining traction, the Everlys took part in a national country-hitmaker package tour with
George Jones,
Mel Tillis,
Patsy Cline,
and 13-year-old
Brenda Lee.
As a seven-year-old radioholic during that summer of 1957, I distinctly remember hearing an ad for the Seattle show on KAYO, a rock'n'roll station at the time.
By Mid-May "Bye Bye Love" was on the Billboard charts, resulting in an invitation to appear on the Friday Night Frollics edition of the Grand Ole Opry. "We'd auditioned for the Grand Ole Opry the year before that, and we didn't fit!" Phil noted ironically. As Barry Mazor observes, "Funny what a hit can do. Now they were there."
"The crowd began to cheer with the opening words," Nashville Banner columnist Ben A. Green reported. "The tuneful duo swept the crowd off its feet within ten minutes, an almost unprecedented event. Two great stars had been born." Two weeks later the Everlys were Opry regulars.
With "Bye Bye Love" climbing to Number 1 on the country chart and Number 2 on the pop survey, the Everlys and the songwriting team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant were looking for a follow-up hit. Recalling how it came about, Felice said, ""I was upstairs; I hadn't gotten out of bed yet. Boud was on the main floor, and I hear this, "Wake up, little Susie, Wake up," and I thought, That sounds great. I'd better jump in there."
"I put the bridge in," she continued. "I put these two kids in a drive-in theater, bored out of their minds and they fall asleep. Now what are we going to tell everybody?"
It was only the first instance of the Bryants' expertise in giving the Everlys a story line that was sure to resonate with a teenage audience. On
"Maybe Tomorrow",
the flipside of their hit
"Wake Up, Little Susie",
their protagonist says to his girl, "You say you're gonna cry Because they made us say goodbye. But our love will stand the test of time, And our ages won't be there to draw the line."
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Links
Blood Harmony: https://amzn.to/4kECqqo
Clovers: https://amzn.to/40ZOUjs
Drifters: https://amzn.to/40ZOUjs
Merle Travis: https://amzn.to/40ZOUjs
Chet Atkins: https://amzn.to/4buFdOX
Kitty Wells: https://amzn.to/4buFdOX
Anita Carter: https://amzn.to/47Z1SC6
Lefty Frizzell: https://amzn.to/4vqhngo
Carl Smith: https://amzn.to/4c7BW9K
Marty Robbins: https://amzn.to/4dIjkyo
"Bye Bye Love": https://amzn.to/42u4jt7
"Give Me A Future": httpsccamznddto/42u4jt7
George Jones: https://amzn.to/4uiPsgY
Mel Tillis: https://amzn.to/4u2Dh8d
Patsy Cline: https://amzn.to/3R841Wm
Brenda Lee: https://amzn.to/3QVL5dz
"Maybe Tomorrow": https://amzn.to/42u4jt7
"Owake Up, Little Susie": https://amzn.to/42u4jt7
(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 Urban Acoustic Blues From Eric Madis 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 well-known local artist and educator Eric Madis in a workshop on acoustic urban blues guitar. "In the early 20th century, when guitarists accompanied blues singers and were improvising single-string guitar solos," he explains in his introduction, "there was little difference between urban blues and jazz. Guitarists Lonnie Johnson, Eddie Lang, and Scrapper Blackwell epitomized this style, which influenced the later electric style of T-bone Walker, Charlie Christian, and B.B. King." You can learn it on Saturday, May 16th, at 11 AM. Registration deadline is May 13th.
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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