Once Upon a Time in the Top Spot: The Everly Brothers, “Walk Right Back”
54 years ago today, brothers Don and Phil Everly ascended to the top of the British charts for the third time in their career, this time with a song written by the buddy of a certain Mr. Holly.
Composed by Sonny Curtis, the longtime friend of Buddy Holly who spent time as a member of The Crickets both before and after Holly’s death, “Walk Right Back” was first presented to Don Everly before it was even finished. In an interview with Jim Liddane of the International Songwriters Association, Curtis explained that he was actually in the midst of a stint in the U.S. Army when he got a three-day pass and down to Hollywood to meet up with up with his fellow Crickets, who were backing the Everlys at the time.
“(Jerry Allison) told me to sing the song for Don – actually, I had only one verse written – and Don called Phil down, and they worked out a gorgeous harmony part,” said Curtis. “So they said, ‘If you write another verse, we’ll record it. Anyway, I went back to base and write a second verse and put it in the mail to them, and the next morning I got a letter from (Allison) to tell me that the Everlys had already recorded the song before they got my letter: they had simply recorded the first verse twice…and that’s the version that was released, and that’s the version that was the hit!”
The Everly Brothers weren’t the only artists to appreciate the merits of “Walk Right Back”: the song has been recorded by a number of folks over the years, including Perry Como, Anne Murray, John Sebastian and David Grisman, Harry Nilsson, Nanci Griffith, Brenda Holloway, Glen Campbell and Bobbi Gentry, Kirsty MacColl, The Move, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and the always-glamtastic Mud.
The Everly Brothers’ version, however, had a flip side to its 45 which was almost as successful in its own right: “Ebony Eyes.” The problem was that it was actually banned by the BBC at first, due to its lyrics being deemed too disturbing for airplay. Why? Apparently, it was because the song’s narrator told the tale of losing his fiancée in an airplane crash, which the powers that be felt could’ve upset some listeners. This is more than a little ironic, when you consider that virtually every story written in the media about “Walk Right Back” probably made note of Sonny Curtis’s ties to the late Buddy Holly, but so it goes.
You can revisit both the A-side and the B-side of the single on Rhino’s collection of highlights from the Everly Brothers’ work on Warner Brothers between 1960 and 1969, but you can tell which of the two songs has had the more lasting impact: the collection is actually entitled Walk Right Back.
