The Everly Brothers

[The Everly Brothers] were one of the major influences on The Beatles. When John and I first started to write songs, I was Phil and he was Don.

Paul McCartney, from Facebook, 2014

From Wikipedia:

The Everly Brothers were an 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.

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 No. 1 in the spring of 1957. Additional hits, including “Wake Up Little Susie,” “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” and “Problems”, would follow through 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 1962. Their final top 10 hit was “That’s Old Fashioned (That’s the Way Love Should Be)”.

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 until the death of Phil Everly in 2014.

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 No. 1 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 intro on “Wake Up Little Susie.” […]

The Everly Brothers were a key influence on the Beatles; in fact, the vocal arrangement of “Please Please Me” was modeled on “Cathy’s Clown,” one of the Everly Brothers’ biggest hists:

A UK number one in 1960, Cathy’s Clown was a major influence on The Beatles – who copied the vocal arrangement for their single Please Please Me.

Indeed, Lennon and McCartney were seasoned Everly Brothers impersonators from their days in Hamburg – Lennon playing the role of Don, taking the lower, baritone parts, while McCartney aped Phil with his higher countermelody.

It wasn’t just The Beatles, though. Dozens of the “British Invasion” bands were indebted to Don and Phil – who repaid the favour by recording an album with The Hollies, and incorporating jangling Beatles-style guitars into their own music.

From The Everly Brothers: ‘That sibling sound’ – BBC News, January 4, 2014

In 1976, Paul McCartney referenced “Phil and Don” in the lyrics to “Let ‘Em In” from the album “Wings at the Speed of Sound.”

In 1983, the Everlys reunited in the studio for the first time in over a decade to record “EB ’84,” produced by Dave Edmunds. Its lead single, “On the Wings of a Nightingale” — written by McCartney — reached the Top 10 on the adult contemporary chart and marked their final appearances on the US Hot 100 and UK charts.

Albums, EPs & singles by The Everly Brothers