*In The Time Of The Teenage Music Counterrevolution- The Music Of The Everly Brothers

A YouTube's Clip Of The Everly Brothers Doing "All I Have To Do Is Dream".



CD REVIEW

The Everly Brothers: All-Time Original Hits, Rhino Records, 1999



There was a time in my youth, in the late 1950's, just after the hullabaloo of the original emergence of rock&roll as a threat to national security with the rise of the likes of Bill Halley, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry and the like had subsided and before the British invasion that revitalized rock had surfaced teenage popular music hit a bump in the road. During that time young male singers like Ricky Nelson, Bobby Dee, Fabian, Conway Twitty and the singers under review, the Everly Brothers, emerged or were pushed forward to fill in the blanks. This was a period where there was a conscious effort to tone down, sweeten up and bastardize rock. Although the Everly Brothers cannot be said to have been the cultural force behind that movement, after all they just wanted to sing, make money and be popular with the girls, they certainly benefited from this shift in the popular music industry. Other more sinister adult forces led the charge to this homogenized music.

That said, on their own terms the brothers were hardly the worst of the lot in presenting this kind of music to their teenage public, especially those adoring, dreamy-eyed white suburban girls whose allegiance drove their material up the pop charts. Some of their work, included for your inspection here, can and should be considered classics of this dark period in American teenage music. While the Everly Brothers on their best days will never have the force of Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll", Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock" or Jerry Lee's "Breathless', their clean, well produced music and okay instrumentation will survive on the second or third echelon of the rock pantheon.

Who, from that generation, can forget the panic lyrics that drive the story line of "Wake Up Little Susie" or the very danceable "All I Have To Do Is Dream" and "Let It Be Me". Teen angst, meaning not having a boy or girl friend is well represented by "Crying In The Rain" and "Cathy's Clown". Can't you just visualize those old school gym dances now. Ya, that is what the brothers were successfully catering to don't you know. For those of us who could not dance, were girl-shy or lacked the proper boffo- haired appearance of the singers of the period we got our chances later but for those guys handy with a slick comb this was their time-and the Everlys'.


Wake Up Little Susie Lyrics
Artist(Band):The Everly Brothers

Wake up, little Susie, wake up
Wake up, little Susie, wake up
We’ve both been sound asleep, wake up, little Susie, and weep
The movie’s over, it’s four o’clock, and we’re in trouble deep
Wake up little Susie
Wake up little Susie, well

Whatta we gonna tell your mama
Whatta we gonna tell your pa
Whatta we gonna tell our friends when they say “ooh-la-la”
Wake up little Susie
Wake up little Susie, well

I told your mama that you’d be in by ten
Well Susie baby looks like we goofed again
Wake up little Susie
Wake up little Susie, we gotta go home

Wake up, little Susie, wake up
Wake up, little Susie, wake up
The movie wasn’t so hot, it didn’t have much of a plot
We fell asleep, our goose is cooked, our reputation is shot
Wake up little Susie
Wake up little Susie, well

Whatta we gonna tell your mama
Whatta we gonna tell your pa
Whatta we gonna tell our friends when they say “ooh-la-la”
Wake up little Susie
Wake up little Susie
Wake up little Susie

All I Have To Do Is Dream Lyrics
Artist(Band):The Everly Brothers

Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
When I want you in my arms
When I want you and all your charms
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream

When I feel blue in the night
And I need you to hold me tight
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam

I can make you mine, taste your lips of wine
Anytime night or day
Only trouble is, gee whiz
I’m dreamin’ my life away

I need you so that I could die
I love you so and that is why
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam

I can make you mine, taste your lips of wine
Anytime night or day
Only trouble is, gee whiz
I’m dreamin’ my life away

I need you so that I could die
I love you so and that is why
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream

FADE
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream



Bye Bye Love Lyrics
Artist(Band):The Everly Brothers

CHORUS:
Bye bye love
Bye bye happiness, hello loneliness
I think I´m-a gonna cry-y
Bye bye love, bye bye sweet caress, hello emptiness
I feel like I could di-ie
Bye bye my love goodby-eye

There goes my baby with-a someone new
She sure looks happy, I sure am blue
She was my baby till he stepped in
Goodbye to romance that might have been

CHORUS

I´m-a through with romance, I´m a-through with love
I´m through with a´countin´ the stars above
And here´s the reason that I´m so free
My lovin´ baby is through with me

CHORUS

Bye bye my love goodby-eye
Bye bye my love goodby-eye

FADE: Bye bye my love goodby-eye
Bye bye my love goodby-eye



Cathy's Clown Lyrics
Artist(Band):The Everly Brothers

CHORUS
Don’t want your lo-o-o-o-ove anymore
Don’t want your ki-i-i-i-isses, that’s for sure
I die each time I hear this sound
“Here he co-o-o-o-omes, that’s Cathy’s clown”

I’ve gotta stand tall, you know a man can’t crawl
But when he knows you tell lies and he hears ‘em passin’ by
He’s not a man at all

CHORUS

When you see me shed a tear and you know that it’s sincere
Dontcha think it’s kinda sad that you’re treatin’ me so bad
Or don’t you even care

CHORUS

FADE
That’s Cathy’s clown
That’s Cathy’s clown

Waiting To Exhale- Pop Music in 1960

CD REVIEW

The Heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll-1960, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1995

In the late 1960’s a number of my friends from the Generation of ’68 who considered themselves part of the counter-cultural movement argued, sincerely I believe, that music, by which they meant rock or maybe folk/rock music was the revolution. According to this political logic the various summers of love, be-ins, Woodstocks, etc., if sustained, would create the atmosphere for social change without the need for either a political overthrow of the current capitalist system or doing any heavy political lifting to overturn society’s values and create the ‘new man and woman’. Probably the most articulate expression of that concept was expounded by the likes of John and Yoko Lennon. Well, life has demonstrated once and for all the fantastic nature of that assertion. Which is just a roundabout way for me to argue my point here that while music may not be the revolution some music may be ‘counter-revolutionary’. Let me explain that further.

Whatever the roots of rock and roll- country, rockabilly, blues, rhythm and blues, etc. the sound produced was clearly a dramatic departure from the likes of Ms. Patti Page and her "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?" and songs of that ilk that clogged up the airwaves in the early 1950’s. Rock got people, and by this I mean young ‘impressionable’ people like myself, moving. Moving much more than our parents liked. In short, getting caught up in the ‘sexual’ sensual beat of things like "Shake, Rattle and Roll" or "Good Rockin’ Tonight". And there was a palpable backlash from adults and other authorities to this. While teens might have then begun to have more disposable dollars to spend that money came from parents, for the most part. The record companies and other responded, at least in part, to that reality. Hence this truly scary compilation of tunes from 1960 that, frankly, put my hair on ends when I listened to it recently.

Don’t get me wrong. I listened, like millions of other teenagers, to this music and liked some of it but in listening to it in combination back-to-back with Carl Perkins' "Classic Hits" for Sun Records I want my money back. No, not from Time-Life but from whoever imposed this stuff on us in 1960. Okay, compare the rock classics of 1955 like Perkins’ "Blue Suede Shoes" or "Everyone Wants To Be My Baby" and The Theme From “A Summer Place” by Percy Faith and the band, Connie Steven’s "Sixteen Reasons" or Bobby Vee’s "Devil or Angel". Need I go on or say more. Unless you are a nostalgically-inclined modern popular music historian then pass this by and wait for The Rolling Stones or the Beatles to come by in a few years. Enough said