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The Everly Brothers - Both Sides Of An Evening + Instant Party (1962)

Track listing:
  1. My Mammy 2:12
  2. Muskrat 2:15
  3. My Gal Sal 2:48
  4. Grandfather's Clock 2:20
  5. Bully Of The Town 1:59
  6. Chlo-e 2:02
  7. Mention My Name in Sheboygan 1:48
  8. Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo 1:44
  9. The Wayward Wind 2:20
  10. Don't Blame Me 3:24
  11. Now Is The Hour 2:37
  12. Little Old Lady 2:21
  13. When I Grow Too Old To Dream 2:27
  14. Love Is Where You Find It 1:47
  15. Step It Up And Go 1:57
  16. Theme From ''Carnival'' (Love Makes The World Go Round) 2:40
  17. Jezebel 2:19
  18. True Love 2:04
  19. Bye Bye Blackbird 3:17
  20. When It's Night Time In Italy It's Wednesday Over Here 2:02
  21. Oh! My Papa (O Mein Papa) 2:07
  22. Trouble In Mind 2:31
  23. Autumn Leaves 2:54
  24. Long Lost John 1:49
  25. The Party's Over 2:15
  26. Ground Hawg 2:02
  27. It's Been Nice (Goodnight) - (Bonus Track) 2:05
  28. The Sheik Of Araby (Bonus Track) 2:00
  29. Gran Mamou (Bonus Track) 2:25
  30. Hernando's Hideaway (Bonus Track) 2:29
  31. That's Old Fashioned (That's The Way Love Should Be) - (Bonus Track) 2:22
  32. Crying In The Rain (Bonus Track) 1:59
  33. I'm Not Angry (Bonus Track) 2:00
  34. He's Got My Sympathy (First Recorded Version) 2:04

Notes

Both Sides of an Evening is usually cited as the place where the Everly Brothers' music and career started to go wrong. Their relationship with their longtime producer and publisher, Wesley Rose, had fallen apart in late 1960 amid a conflict over copyrights, specifically their decision to record as a single an old Nacio Herb Brown/Arthur Freed song called "Temptation" that he didn't publish. Cut off from their regular source of songs, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who were Rose-published composers, were left to their own devices as songwriters, with the complication that they were also signed to Rose and there were now pending lawsuits in the relationship. Finding potential hits in such circumstances, much less a dozen good songs at a time to record, was a serious challenge. Their answer was an album consisting of rhythm numbers on side one ("For Dancing") and slow ballads ("For Dreaming") on side two. Most of the first side -- apart from the unfortunate decision to record "Mention My Name in Sheboygan" -- worked beautifully, their version of "Muskrat" even getting a kind of shimmering Bo Diddley-style "shave and a haircut" beat, and the duo even put a fresh (and unexpected rock) spin on the Al Jolson number "My Mammy." Side two is very soft for a rock & roll album and isn't helped by the presence of "Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo" and "Little Old Lady," though it is sung so beautifully that any of the group's teenaged fans that listened to it all the way through couldn't complain of the singing. In some ways, Both Sides of an Evening was the duo's most ambitious and mature record to date, but it just wasn't terribly exciting or of much interest (especially the second side) to the teeenagers that made up the vast bulk of their audience.

Instant Party! isn't very highly regarded as an Everly Brothers album, for the good reason that it showed the Everlys stepping outside of their rock & roll personas. Apart from the crisply played and sung opening track, "Step It Up and Go" -- which had been suggested by Ike Everly -- and a few minor bright spots such as "True Love" and "Ground Hawg" (another Ike Everly-spawned track), the material was pretty dire, confined almost entirely to the pop standards of another era, including such chestnuts as "Bye Bye Blackbird," "Autumn Leaves," and "Oh! My Pa-Pa." It was sung well enough, and much of the playing was impeccable, but also, apart from three exceptions, incredibly boring, something the Everlys had never been before. Instant Party! marked a low point in their artistic fortunes yet, ironically, even as they were delivering it to Warner Bros., the Everlys were recording singles such as "Crying in the Rain," which represented their sound and their work far better.