14 Sept 2026
Episode 047 - Seven Inches Of History - The Everly Brothers - Cathy's Clown (1960)
Two voices, one microphone, a broken heart and a drum sound that seemed to arrive from somewhere in the future.
This time on Seven Inches of History, we reach The Everly Brothers and "Cathy's Clown" – one of the most distinctive records of 1960 and a single that helped define the sound of pop harmony for years to come.
Last time, we left Anthony Newley sitting happily at number one with "Do You Mind?"
Unfortunately for Anthony, two brothers from America were approaching rather rapidly.
Don and Phil Everly were hardly newcomers. By the spring of 1960 they had already enjoyed an extraordinary run of hits including "Bye Bye Love," "Wake Up Little Susie," "All I Have to Do Is Dream," "Bird Dog" and "Problems." Their close harmonies had become instantly recognisable, their records were selling by the million and an entire generation of aspiring singers was quietly trying to work out exactly how two voices could fit together quite like that.
Then came "Cathy's Clown."
And somehow, even by Everly Brothers standards, it sounded different.
The record begins with that extraordinary rolling drum pattern before Don and Phil arrive together with a vocal so perfectly matched that separating the two voices is almost impossible. There is no lengthy introduction and very little warning. Within seconds, our hero is publicly humiliated, Cathy has apparently been behaving badly and everybody seems to know about it.
Pop music can be terribly cruel.
Written by Don Everly and inspired, at least in part, by one of Don's former girlfriends, "Cathy's Clown" was recorded at RCA Studio B in Nashville. Engineer Bill Porter helped create its unusual sound, using a tape loop on Buddy Harman's drums to give the impression that two drummers were playing together.
The brothers themselves sang into the same microphone.
No endless collection of vocal takes, no computer correction, no moving things around afterwards until everybody sounded perfect. Just Don, Phil, a microphone and one of the most famous sibling harmonies in popular music.
It was also the beginning of a new chapter.
After several enormously successful years with Cadence Records, The Everly Brothers had signed a major new contract with Warner Bros. "Cathy's Clown" became their first single for the label and, in Britain, appeared with the wonderfully appropriate catalogue number WB1.
Not a bad way to introduce yourself.
The record entered the British chart in April 1960 and, at the beginning of May, displaced Anthony Newley's "Do You Mind?" from the number-one position.
And then it stayed there.
For seven weeks.
Across the Atlantic it was doing much the same thing, spending five weeks at number one in America and becoming the biggest record of The Everly Brothers' career.
But there is something else happening when you listen to "Cathy's Clown."
You can hear the future.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney were listening. So were countless other young musicians who would soon form the groups that transformed British pop music. The Everlys' approach to harmony became part of the vocabulary of The Beatles, The Hollies, Simon and Garfunkel, The Beach Boys and many others, and the vocal arrangement of "Cathy's Clown" would later be cited as an influence on "Please Please Me."
So, tucked away inside this deceptively simple two-and-a-half-minute tale of romantic humiliation is a little glimpse of what the 1960s were about to become.
In this episode, we take another record from the pile and explore the story of Don and Phil Everly, from their childhood appearances on American radio through the great Cadence hits and on to the remarkable recording of "Cathy's Clown."
We'll look at the Everly sound, the musicians and studio techniques behind the record, their move to Warner Bros., the astonishing success that followed and the influence those two intertwined voices would have on the generation waiting just behind them.
There may also be an attempt to determine precisely what Cathy had done to deserve an entire hit record being written about her.
Whatever it was, everybody apparently knew.
Poor bloke.
Here he comes...
It can only be Seven Inches of History.
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