Song of the Day 8/23: The Everly Brothers, “Cathy’s Clown”

The Everly Brothers were the greatest duo in rock ‘n’ roll history (Hall & Oates had more Top 40 singles than the Everlys’ 26, but c’mon). They helped establish some foundational elements of rock ‘n’ roll, among them close harmonies, a country twang — and brother acts who don’t get along.

Don Everly, who died over the weekend, was the elder sibling in what started as a family act. Phil was still in high school when the pair moved to Nashville in 1955, and by early 1957 they had a No. 1 record on the Cashbox sales chart, “Bye Bye Love.” Like several of their early hits, that one was written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, but the brothers also wrote some of their own tunes.

Their biggest self-penned hit was also their first after moving to Warner Brothers in 1960. “Cathy’s Clown” sold 8 million records, and its authorship became the subject of a lawsuit once the brothers fell out. This version finds them backed by the Crickets.

The British Invasion curtailed the careers of most early rock ‘n’ rollers, but the Everly Brothers’ decline started before that, mainly because their former record label, Cadence, kept releasing material from the vaults to compete with their Warners output, and they got into a fight with their music publisher, Wesley Rose of Acuff-Rose, when they wanted to record a song whose rights were held by another firm.

Their last Top 10 hit came in 1962 in the U.S., though they stayed popular in England into the mid-’60s. They gradually moved to country-rock, but by 1973 their squabbling, exacerbated by their amphetamine habits, led them to split. They didn’t speak to each other for 10 years except at their father’s funeral, but they reunited in 1983 and, despite personal differences, stayed active into the early years of the 21st century.

Phil died in 2014, and in 2016 Don endorsed Hillary Clinton for president — something he said he couldn’t have done when Phil was alive because they disagreed so strongly about politics.