The Everly Brothers

The Everly Brothers were an American musical 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. Don and Phil Everly were raised in a musical family. As children in the 1940s, they appeared on radio in Iowa, singing with their parents as the Everly Family. During their high-school years in Knoxville, they performed on radio and television. The brothers gained the attention of Chet Atkins, who began to promote them. They began writing and recording their own music in 1956. The brothers' first hit song was "Bye Bye Love", which hit number one in the spring of 1957. Additional hits, including "Wake Up Little Susie", "All I Have to Do Is Dream", and "Problems", followed in 1958. In 1960, they signed with Warner Bros. Records and recorded "Cathy's Clown", 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 the early 1960s. Their final top-10 hit was "That's Old Fashioned (That's the Way Love Should Be)" (1962). The Everly Brothers experienced a decline in popularity in the United States in the 1960s due to changing tastes in popular music, long-simmering disputes with Acuff-Rose Music CEO Wesley Rose, and increased drug use by the brothers. However, the duo continued to release hit singles in the U.K. and Canada, and had many successful tours in the 1960s. In the early 1970s, the brothers began releasing solo recordings; they ended their musical partnership in 1973. In 1983, the Everly Brothers reunited. They continued to perform periodically as a duo until about 2005, when they quietly broke up again. Phil Everly died in 2014, and Don Everly died in 2021. The Everly Brothers had a major influence on the music of the generation that followed them. Many of the top acts of the 1960s were heavily influenced by the close-harmony singing and acoustic guitar playing of the Everly Brothers; those acts included the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Bee Gees, and Simon & Garfunkel. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked the Everly Brothers number one on its list of the 20 Greatest Duos of All Time. The brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class of 1986 and into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001. Don Everly was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2019, earning the organization's first Iconic Riff Award for his distinctive rhythm guitar introduction on "Wake Up Little Susie".