Dave's Song of the Day
Love Hurts – The Everly Brothers
Tuesday song of the day: Today’s song was not released as a single due to a dispute between the artists and their manager.
The Everly Brothers released the album
A Date with the Everly Brothers in 1960. Included on the album was
Love Hurts, a song composed by Boudleaux Bryant. Bryant had written previous hits for the Everlys, usually in partnership with his wife Felice. These included
Bye Bye Love,
Bird Dog,and
Wake Up Little Susie, among others. The Everly Brothers planned on releasing
Love Hurts as a single but were having a dispute with their manager Wesley Rose over song selection at the time.
In addition to being their manager, Wesley Rose was part owner and CEO of Acuff-Rose Music, a publishing business with a stable of songwriters, including Boudleaux and Felice Bryant. Rose wanted the brothers to record only songs owned by Acuff-Rose, which would ensure that his company got royalties from all the Everly Brothers records. The Everlys did record mostly Acuff-Rose songs, but Rose was angered that they had also recorded a few songs by other publishers, including covers of Little Richard’s
Lucille, and a 1930’s Bing Crosby song,
Temptation.
The dispute led to a split between the Everlys and Rose, along with a lawsuit. As a result, Rose gave
Love Hurts to Roy Orbison to record. His version came out in 1961 as the B-side to
Running Scared. As the B-side, it didn’t get a lot of airplay in most places, but for some reason in Australia
Love Hurts became a hit, reaching #5 there. All of this prevented the original Everly Brothers recording of
Love Hurts from being released as a single. As Don Everly later explained, “Wesley covered us with Roy Orbison, which was outlandishly selfish. The arrangement was ours, and it was written for us. We couldn’t release it as a single because we didn’t know if Acuff-Rose would license it or not because we were in a lawsuit with them. It got that bitter.”
As for the Everlys, the only single they released from
A Date with the Everly Brothers was
Cathy’s Clown, which they themselves had written. That song was a huge hit for the brothers, reaching #1 on the
Billboard Hot 100 and selling over eight million records.
As a result of the split with Wesley Rose, the Everly Brothers no longer had access to the writers of Acuff-Rose going forward, including the Bryants. Since Don and Phil Everly were also signed to Acuff-Rose Music as songwriters, this meant that their own future songwriting efforts would be owned by the company until their contract expired. They tried to get around this by crediting the songs they wrote to the fictional Jimmy Howard. A lawsuit eventually got Acuff-Rose the royalties they were owed for the “Jimmy Howard” songs, however.
The
Love Hurts story didn’t end there. It has proven a very popular song for other artists to cover. In all, the song has been covered over 120 times. This includes versions by Cher, Don McLean, Joan Jett, Heart, and Rod Stewart. Jim Capaldi of Traffic had a #4 UK solo hit with the song in 1975. By far the most well-known version of the song today was released by Nazareth in 1974 on the
Hair of the Dog album. (the title track of that album was song of the day for May 20th, 2020 here:
Hair of the Dog – Nazareth ) The Nazareth cover of
Love Hurts was a heavier take on the song, and went to #8 on the
Billboard Hot 100. It continues to be popular on classic rock radio stations in 2020.
Everly Brothers, 1960
View: https://youtu.be/J6YI26ZMm54
Roy Orbison, 1961
View: https://youtu.be/HWNFTo2WayE
Nazareth, 1974
View: https://youtu.be/qn-z5pIe5PQ
Tomorrow: Monkey business on a sunny afternoon