Various Artists - Covered: Boudleaux Bryant & Felice Bryant: 1955-2004

The "Covered" series is back again. I thought I was done with all the great songwriters with careers that began before the 1960s, but boy was I wrong. Recently, I stumbled across a Rolling Stone Magazine list of who they consider the top 100 songwriters of all time. I disagree with some of their choices, but the list made me recall some songwriters I'd overlooked.

Here's one: Boudleaux Bryant & Felice Bryant. They were a husband and wife team all the way. They met in 1945, when they were young, and married right away. They stayed married Boudleaux passed away in 1987. Felice Bryant lived until 2003. There are some occasional examples where one of them wrote a song without crediting the other, but those are rare.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on them. I find it interesting that they're so closely linked to each other that there's just one entry for their partnership:

Felice and Boudleaux Bryant - Wikipedia

The Bryants didn't write as many songs I deemed worthy of inclusion as some others. For instance, I've posted six albums of songs by Bacharach and David, and seven albums of Goffin and King. But some of the songs they wrote are all time classics. For instance, Rolling Stone Magazine includes three of their songs in their list of the 500 greatest songs of all time: "Bye Bye Love," "Wake Up, Little Susie," and "All I Have to Do Is Dream."

Many of the songs they wrote were country songs. I can only take country in limited doses, and I'm sure others feel the same. So in deciding which songs to include, and which versions, I've focused on their more widely accessible material, often done by non-country artists. 

At first, I wasn't going to make a Covered album for them, because they're so closely associated with the Everly Brothers. One could make an excellent album just of the hits the Everly Brothers had that were written by the Bryants. But I decided there were a good number of their songs done for others, plus I could select alternate versions so this didn't basically turn into an Everly Brothers greatest hits of sorts. I tried hard not to have more than one song by any one artist. I mostly succeeded, although in the end I went with two by the Everly Brothers. I included their version of "Bye Bye Love" because it's so iconic, and there isn't a really famous version done by someone else. I also included their version of "Problems" because there were almost no cover versions of it I could find.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Nightmare (Jack Turner)
02 How's the World Treating You (Elvis Presley)
03 Bye Bye Love (Everly Brothers)
04 Problems (Everly Brothers)
05 Raining in My Heart (Buddy Holly & the Crickets)
06 Let's Think about Living (Bob Luman)
07 Mexico (Bob Moore & His Orchestra)
08 So How Come [No One Loves Me] (Beatles)
09 Some Sweet Day (Fairport Convention)
10 All I Have to Do is Dream (Bobbie Gentry & Glen Campbell)
11 Rocky Top (Laurie Anderson)
12 Take a Message to Mary (Bob Dylan)
13 Brand New Heartache (Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris)
14 Love Hurts (Nazareth)
15 Devoted to You (James Taylor & Carly Simon)
16 Poor Jenny (Rockpile)
17 Wake Up Little Susie (Simon & Garfunkel)
18 Bird Dog (Joan Jett & the Blackhearts)
19 Like Strangers (Emmylou Harris)
20 Living with the Shades Pulled Down (George Thorogood & the Destroyers)
21 Sleepless Nights (Norah Jones) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/16373107/COVERDBoudlxBryntFelceBrynt_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I couldn't find a really good color photo of the Bryants together, so I took a black and white one and colorized it. I don't know what year it's from, but based on their appearance it has to be when they were young. In the original photo, Boudleaux was considerably higher up than Felice - he must have been a tall guy. I moved her up and closer to him so I could prominently feature their faces.