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On this day, 19 September 1995, rock and pop legends The Everly Brothers played Cardiff’s St David’s Hall.
The American rock duo, known for steel-string acoustic guitar playing and close harmony singing. Consisting of Isaac Donald "Don" Everly and Phillip "Phil" Everly, the duo combined elements of rock and roll, country, and pop, becoming pioneers of country rock.
The duo was raised in a musical family in Central City, Kentucky, first appearing on radio singing with their father Ike Everly and mother Margaret Everly as "The Everly Family" in the 1940s. They gained the attention of Chet Atkins through Merle Travis and subsequently moved to Knoxville, Tennessee while still in high school. Nashville musicians like Atkins began to promote them for national attention.
They began writing and recording their own music in 1956, and their first hit song came in 1957, with "Bye Bye Love", written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. The song hit No. 1 in the spring of 1957, and additional hits would follow through 1958, many of them written by the Bryants, including "Wake Up Little Susie", "All I Have to Do Is Dream", and "Problems". In 1960, they signed with the major label Warner Bros. Records and recorded "Cathy's Clown", written by the brothers themselves, which was their biggest selling single. The brothers enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1961, and their output dropped off, though additional hit singles continued through 1962, with "That's Old Fashioned (That's the Way Love Should Be)" being their last top-10 hit.
Long-simmering disputes with Wesley Rose, the CEO of Acuff-Rose Music, which managed the group, and a growing drug usage in the 1960s, as well as changing tastes in popular music, led to the group's decline in popularity in its native U.S., though the brothers continued to release hit singles in the U.K. and Canada and had many highly successful tours throughout the 1960s. In the early 1970s, the brothers began releasing solo recordings, and in 1973 they officially broke up. Starting in 1983, the brothers got back together and continued to perform periodically until Phil's death in 2014. Don died seven years later.
The group was highly influential with the music of the generation that followed it. Many of the top acts of the 1960s were heavily influenced by the close-harmony singing and acoustic guitar playing of the Everly Brothers, including the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Bee Gees, and Simon & Garfunkel. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked the Everly Brothers No. 1 on its list of the 20 Greatest Duos of All Time.
South Wales Echo Review - 40 years on and still great
The career of Phil and Don Everly spans forty years since they first performed as children on radio shows in the fifties.
And it's this experience professionalism picked up along the way that had a packed audi. ence at St David's Hall eating out of their hands.
Mixing country, blues, and folk, they wasted no time in cracking out hit songs like Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Little Susie and Cathy's Clown and whipped up a storm.
During ballads like Let It Be Me and Crying In The Rain, you could have heard a pin drop as the audience listened to the wonderful harmonies that have become the singers' trademark.
A little older and without a teenager in sight, the Everly Brothers certainly know how to put on a show - no fancy lighting or techno gimmicks, just good songs performed with enthusiasm.
Phil and Don benefited from having a excellent band of musicians which featured the brilliant guitar playing of Albert Lee.
Tony Woolway
