The Everly Brothers, that is.
And, no, I’m not asking about their bunk beds. When they sang, who sang the top parts and who sang the bottom parts.
<applies one bump rule>
Really??? All the popular music experts on the SDMB, and no one knows???
Not sure. On the Beatles song “Two of Us”, Paul says to John, “Take it, Phil”. Paul nearly always sang high harmonies. If he really identified himself with Don Everly, as this quip suggests, then I’d guess that Don sang the upper parts, too.
I’m sure some Doper has more direct evidence one way or another.
On the other hand, I was just googling around trying to find an answer and came across a couple of references to “Phil’s harmonies”, and Don’s the older one, so my WAG is Phil took the high part. When I get home, I’ll check out some of their YouTube clips to see if I can discern which does which. It might be difficult, because a lot of the time, they sang in harmonic thirds and stayed at that interval, and since they’re brothers, they sound a lot alike.
Definitely have my curiosity up, though!
Don sang lower, Phil sang higher.
That’s not what I was thinking! :eek:
The Louvin Brothers were a big influence on the Everlys. And their harmony style was far from simple. From Amazon’s entry for The Bear Family’s massive Louvin Brothers collection:
Hear some Brother Acts here…
Don is clearly taking the lead/low part on these two:
Bye Bye Love
Wake Up Little Suzie
…and in the couple of other clips (as well as these two), Phil is a bit farther from the mike, kind of standard practice for one doing high harmonies.
Also on Bird Dog.
I have no idea of the answer. Just wanted to say that “On the Wings of a Nightingale” is the most underrated recording of all-time.
John Sebastian claims that, decades ago, when Stephen Stills and David Crosby were seeking a high harmony singer, he told them, “There are really only two high harmony singers- you’ve got Phil Everly and you’ve got Graham Nash.”
Phil mustn’t have been available.