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ARTISTS COVERED BY THE BYRDS
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Everly Brothers
The Fiestas
Lowell George
Bob Gibson
Tompall Glaser
Gerry Goffin & Carole King
Woody Guthrie
The Everly Brothers were not only one of the pivotal acts in the history of rock music, but also a key influence on Byrds McGuinn, Clark, Crosby, Hillman, White and, especially, Gram Parsons. The Everlys used beautiful harmonies in all their songs; they played guitar skillfully using country and folk techniques; and they applied a rock beat to country and folk songs. Their influence on the Byrds, both directly and filtered through the Beatles, is audible throughout their work. And through the Everlys, the Byrds sound can be traced back to earlier figures like Merle Travis and the Louvin Brothers.
Dillard & Clark covered the Everly Brothers song "So Sad" on their second album, Through the Morning, Through the Night (A&M, 1969). Gram Parsons recorded three songs by the Everly Brothers with Emmylou Harris supplying vocals: "Love Hurts" on Grievous Angel (Reprise, 1974) and "Sleepless Nights" and "Brand New Heartache" on Sleepless Nights (A&M, 1976). Chris Hillman also duetted on "Brand New Heartache" with Herb Pedersen on Bakersfield Bound (Sugar Hill, 1996).In 1969, Clarence White and Gene Parsons played on one of the Everlys' last singles for Warner Bros., "I'm On My Way Home Again." In 1972, White supplied guitar and David Crosby added harmonies on the Everlys LP Stories We Could Tell (RCA, 1972).Everly Brothers International, the official fan club, has a new and improved official fan club homepage.The Fiestas
The Fiestas were a black vocal group from New Jersey. Farther Along contains a cover of "So Fine," their biggest hit, which made the Top 20 in 1959.
Lowell George
Lowell George was the main songwriter, vocalist, and slide guitarist of Little Feat, at least on the four seminal albums from their debut, Little Feat (Warner Bros., 1971) through Feats Don't Fail Me Now (Warner Bros., 1974). George's songwriting might have qualified as "Cosmic American Music," to use Gram Parsons's phrase: it combined country, blues, rock, jazz and New Orleans R&B. The Byrds covered two George compositions on (Untitled): "Willin'" and "Truck Stop Girl."
After seven albums with Little Feat, George went solo in 1979, cutting his solo LP Thanks, I'll Eat It Here (Warner Bros., 1979). During a tour with his new backing band, George was found dead in an Arlington, Virginia hotel room, felled by a heart attack brought on by drug abuse. George was 34 years old.You can read more about George on the Little Feat website.Bob Gibson
From the generation that fell between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, Bob Gibson was a leader of the folk music movement in the late '50s and early '60s. Gibson played guitar and banjo, and collected traditional folk songs.
In the mid '50s Gibson recorded several LPs for Riverside Records. One of the tracks from this era was "John Riley," which the Byrds covered on Fifth Dimension. "Old Blue" is another folk song often performed by Gibson and later recorded by the Byrds.In 1959, Gibson signed with Elektra Records. Over the next few years, Elektra released several albums by Gibson, both solo and with partner Bob Camp (who later went by the name Hamilton Camp). Gibson and Camp split as the British Invasion crushed the folk movement. Camp went on to work in a folk-rock vein, while Gibson kept a lower profile. The two reunited for a time in the mid '70s.McGuinn lists Gibson among his "favorite composers" and as one of the biggest influences on his career in Life-lines of the Byrds, a 1965 promo piece. In fact, Gibson came to McGuinn's high school and played for his class, giving McGuinn his first exposure to folk music. To illustrate Gibson's influence on him, McGuinn recorded Gibson's song "Daddy Roll 'Em" on Live from Mars (Hollywood, 1996), and occasionally performs his song "Wayfaring Stranger" during live performances.Gibson was the father of Meridian Green, the wife and musical partner of Gene Parsons. He died in 1996.Tompall Glaser
Tompall Glaser and the Glaser Brothers had achieved success in Nashville by 1968, when the Byrds played the Grand Ole Opry during a half-hour segment they hosted. At that time, Glaser was a part of the Nashville establishment -- so much so that he lost his temper with the Byrds when Gram Parsons announced that they would not be playing the Merle Haggard number Glaser had just announced, but instead would be playing his song "Hickory Wind" (which, in violation of Opry policy, Parsons dedicated to his grandmother).
Ironically, on GP (Reprise, 1973), Parsons would cover "Streets of Baltimore," a Bobby Bare hit co-written by Tompall Glaser and Harlan Howard. A second irony: in the mid '70s, Glaser became one of the first Nashville country stars to abandon Music City's poppy version of country music and join the "outlaw" movement spearheaded by Texans like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. That movement actually achieved the ambition of Gram Parsons to unify the country and rock audiences, if only temporarily.Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Husband and wife songwriting team Gerry Goffin (mostly words) and Carole King (mostly music) cranked out loads of wonderful songs in almost every genre for Don Kirshner's Brill Building music publishing concerns, among them the Shirelles' "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?", Little Eva's "The Locomotion," the Chiffons' "One Fine Day," the Drifters' "Up on the Roof," and Skeeter Davis's "I Can't Stay Mad at You." In later years the pair wrote such hits as the Animals' "Don't Bring Me Down," Herman's Hermits' "I'm Into Something Good," the Monkees' "Pleasant Valley Sunday," and Aretha Franklin's "A Natural Woman" (with Jerry Wexler). The Byrds recorded two of their songs on Notorious Byrd Brothers: "Goin' Back" and "Wasn't Born to Follow." It says a lot for the quality of their songwriting that despite being written by a pair of Brill Building pop writers, the latter song was considered sufficiently hip to appear on the soundtrack to Easy Rider.
Goffin and King divorced in the late '60s. Goffin continued to write with others, and King launched her career as a singer-songwriter, which culminated with the enormously popular album Tapestry (Ode, 1971). For more on King (and Goffin), see Bob's Page of Carole King.Woody Guthrie
The Byrds covered both "Pretty Boy Floyd" (on
Many of Guthrie's best recordings are currently available and well worth checking out. For more on Guthrie, see the Woody Guthrie Pages.[Back to top.]
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