Love before first sight: Felice and Boudleaux Bryant
Being an Everly Brothers fan even as a child and seeing these two names – Felice and Boudleaux Bryant – on so many of their songs, I wondered about them for a long time. Who were they? It’s quite a story:
Boudleaux Bryant was born in Shellman, Georgia, in 1920 and attended local schools as a child. He trained as a classical violinist. Although he performed with the Atlanta Philharmonic Orchestra during its 1937–38 season, he had more interest in country fiddling. Bryant joined Hank Penny and his Radio Cowboys, an Atlanta-based western music band.
In 1945, Bryant met Matilda Genevieve Scaduto (whom he called Felice) when he performed at a hotel in her hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was born in the city in 1925 to an ethnic Sicilian family, and had written lyrics set to traditional Italian tunes. During World War II, she sang and directed shows at the local USO.
Bryant and Scaduto eloped five days after meeting. Boudleaux’s song “All I Have to Do Is Dream” is “autobiographical” for Felice. She was working as an elevator operator at the Schroeder Hotel when she saw Bryant. She has said that she “recognized” him immediately; she had seen his face in a dream when she was eight years old, and had “looked for him forever.” She was 19 when they met.
Now, that’s a romantic story. It’s even more astounding than that, though:
Felice (which was Boudleaux’s pet name for his wife) believed that the couple’s meeting was fate. “I had dreamed of Boudleaux when I was 8 years old,” she said. “When this man was walking toward me in the hotel I recognized him right away. The only thing that was wrong was that he didn’t have a beard. Although he grew one for me later. In the dream we were dancing to our song. Only it was our song.”
In other words, part of the dream seems to have been that they would write songs together.
More:
In the early years of their marriage, the couple settled in Moultrie, Ga. Boudleaux continued to work as a musician and a mechanic, while his wife started dabbling in songwriting. “I always wrote,” Felice said. “I wrote letters and poetry that I would tear up so that they couldn’t be found. I wrote all the time, even if I was only doodling. I had to have someone to talk to, so I talked to myself. I don’t read music. I don’t play an instrument. The words themselves will have a musical value. That’s how I can compose a melody. Then Boudleaux will write the music down, or I’ll turn on the tape machine.”
“We started writing for the hell of it, for fun,” Boudleaux said. “And after about 80 songs we thought, this looks like it could be a good thing. But we originally wrote them for our own amusement, and we’d show them to our friends.”
After months of writing letters to everyone he knew—and didn’t know—in the music business, Boudleaux placed a song called “Country Boy” with Grand Ole Opry singer Little Jimmy Dickens. The song went to No. 7 on the charts in 1949, and by the next year, the Bryants had upped stakes to Nashville…
“At the time, in the field that we flopped into, the artists wrote and performed all of their own material,” Felice recalled. “Then, after a while, the road got to them. They couldn’t think, they couldn’t doodle around on the front porch with a guitar, they couldn’t stroll through the woods and get inspired. So Boudleaux and I were the first people who came to Nashville who didn’t do anything but write. We were the factory.”
It can be difficult to predict which songs will be hits, even for people in the business:
The Bryants’ biggest song of all was one that had been turned down by everyone in the business. “‘Bye Bye Love’ was shown over 30 times before it was ever cut,” Boudleaux recalled. “It was even shown the very morning of the same day the Everly Brothers heard it in the afternoon. When it was turned down, the fella said, ‘Why don’t you show me a good strong song?’ So nobody really knows what a good song is.”…
Of their success, Boudleaux once said, “Unless one feels driven to compose and at the same time has all the instincts of a Mississippi riverboat gambler, he should never seek songwriting as a profession. Unless you know in your heart that you’re great, feel in your bones that you’re lucky and think in your soul that God just might let you get away with it, pick something more certain, like chasing the white whale or eradicating the common housefly. We didn’t have the benefit of such sage advice. Now it’s too late to back up. We made it. Sometimes it pays to be ignorant.”
Do you believe the story of their meeting? I do – perhaps because I have an ever-so-slightly similar story. When I was fourteen and attending an arts camp, I took a drawing and painting class and at one point was required to do a charcoal drawing of something I imagined. I drew a young man’s face; it wasn’t someone I’d ever seen before. I liked it well enough to save it. Seven years later, I met my husband-to-be, who looked very much like that drawing.
We certainly never wrote songs, though, together or separately. I’m in awe of people who can do that.
‘Country Boy’ became the trademark song for Little Jimmie Dickens who had a long and beloved career in country music and was a regular performer on the Grand Ole Opry for decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVeVId5eSEg
There have been some great husband/wife songwriting duos and I mean primarily writers not performers. Another one is Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil who have written hundreds of songs together like ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’ best known as recorded by The Animals and dozens of other hits like this one by Sergio Mendes that Rick Beato made an extremely popular video about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnRxTW8GxT8
My wife, who is an astrology fan, once visited a fortune teller. As she walked in and sat down the woman asked her “Who is Michael?” She said she didn’t know a Michael. The fortuneteller said “He has very light hair.” My wife said she did not like blond men.
My hair turned grey at age 30. That was years before we met.
I’ll give you a topic.
The Righteous Brothers were neither brothers nor righteous.
Discuss.
Oh but they could sing M Smith. That’s all that counts.
I believe the story of their meeting too. I have a similar story…
In March of ’85, my wife gave birth to my 2nd child and daughter. We were all in a birthing suite in Austin, TX. At the moment that my daughter was put in my arms and I laid eyes upon her, I had the most overwhelming sensation of happiness at seeing my old friend again. It seemed like we’d been apart for so long… what a happy reunion!
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I’ve come to believe that we are all immortal souls with a perpetual connection to God and also to others. We only get clues about this while we’re in the physical world. We should pay attention.
Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you”
I heard the most wonderful sentiment the other day. It was from Ainsley Erhardt. She has written a book, “I’m So Glad You were Born.” When I heard that, it struck me how glad I was that so many people I have known and loved were born. But particularly my wife. It was a miracle that we met – both young people far from our homes of origin. Both wondering if we would ever meet the right person. My taste in women had always been for dark-haired, petite girls with an impetuous laugh. No accounting for that preference, but she fit it perfectly. I’m so glad she was born, and we met.
Neither one of us can carry a tune, but before we turned eighty-five, we could dance. Not like Fredc and Ginger, but the few steps we knew worked for us. Now we do the hobble. Not pretty, but not on walkers yet, so we\re happy.
I’ve never written a complete song, but I occasionally make up tunes to fit poems I like…and the opposite, lyrics to fit existing tunes….usually silly lyrics, like my musical tributes to Biden’s director of the National Economic Council:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/67917.html
Carole King and Gerry Goffin were husband and wife until they divorced. King wrote the music, Goffin the lyrics. Consider one of their most famous songs, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”. It is about a teenage girl losing her virginity told from her point of view but the lyrics were written by a man (Goffin).
The Everly Brothers (actual brothers) were one of the best groups, with tons of good songs.
Somewhere on YouTube there is a biopic of them. Their whole family was musical, and they were immersed in a musical culture that included gospel, blues, rhythm and blues and other genres. It is well worth the time to view.
There is another great biopic on Linda Ronstadt, also well worth the viewing. Again, her whole family was musical. The Eagles were her backup groups before they set out on their own.
My wife has told me a similar story, about how she had a mental picture of me in her head before we met, so when we did meet, she could tell I was the one. I didn’t believe her (and even now, have residual skepticism) but I will admit that there may be something to it. We have only been married for forty-three years, so maybe time will tell. : )
I was very recently wondering who this Boudleaux guy was. I enjoy learning how to sing songs and play along with my guitar, and am always in search of songs I would like. A few months ago, I ran across the song Love Hurts, thought it would fit the bill, and it does very well. It is a well-constructed song, with a great chord progression and great lyrics (although I did change one word). So, thanks, Neo, for providing the background on its authors.
I was trying to figure out why this sounded a little familiar to me. Felice and Boudleaux were mentioned in Ken Burns’s Country Music documentary series. So many people were mentioned in the series that they all sort of ran together, but a name like Boudleaux may stick around in the subconscious. Maybe that got their music a first listen from recording companies.
So neat to learn the back stories.
T-Rex mentioned Boudleaux’s song “Love Hurts.” Neo and other Bee Gees fans probably remember this heartfelt cover by Robin Gibb. He’s performing just a short time after losing his twin brother Mo – and the emotion really comes through.
Robin Gibb “Love Hurts” – Top of the Pops – https://youtu.be/E2ngtsdS4tc
The story makes me wonder if there are not “other” dimensions beyond the three we experience daily.
How is it possible that somebody you have never met was the one you had always imagined you were supposed to meet? And when you saw that person you just knew that that was the person and he/she looked exactly as imagined.
Some physicists believe there are more than three dimensions, so maybe there is something to a greater-than-3-dimensional universe.
Somewhat analogous to this story – in the sense that it really defies all logic and science – are the stories you read about someone waking up in the middle of the night and seeing ( an apparition ) of a loved one standing in their bedroom, and the person that awoke just knew that the loved one had just died; and they did. More bizarre is that the person that had died lived hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Or the stories about near death experiences. What’s weird about these – actually all of it is weird – is that the experiences described by the dead, then un-dead person; regardless of the ethnicity or race or nationality or where on earth they live, have somewhat similar descriptions of what they experienced.
Maybe it’s a natural response ( physiological ?) of the human brain when a person is near-death; who knows.
IIRC, there was a Harvard prof. who set out to prove near death experiences were all bunk, but changed his mind after interviewing many people who had experienced this phenomenon. I do not recall the professor’s name.
But here is an interesting article on this:
https://www.the-sun.com/news/5074177/near-death-experience-afterlife-see-before-dying/
How do you explain these really bizarre events?
Apparently, the science / biology / physiology is not settled, unlike…..well, you know.
“Apparently, the science / biology / physiology is not settled…”
Along these lines, I am intrigued by the fact that if you stare at a person from behind, they will often sense it and turn around.
When I look back on my life, there are decisions I made that in the end caused me great misery. And yet if I had not made those decisions, had taken the other fork so to speak, I would have had a different life and I don’t see how I would have ever known my true love. A path that seems fated. A tale of a broken heart and loneliness that starts with me effing up my life to the point that I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue and ends with the space shuttle Challenger blowing up. But I found my true love. The past all seems like a distant dream really.
Great story of true love. (I love it!)
I’ve been spending my extra time at Karoke recently, so yet another reason for much less time for blog posting. More time IRL (in real life).
I’m fine to excellent on 60s – 80s songs that were big hits, but here’s a newish one from Fool’s Garden, which my wife also likes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJQYoGyEtDs
Lemon Tree – a small hit. Last Saturday I found out it was originally a German song, quite a surprise.
The first time I met my wife, the Love of My Life, I did tell her this great pick up line (NOT!) “You look like somebody I used to be in love with”. And while I thought there was something similar, most would think it was not so much in looks, as in the smile & sparkle in the eyes. Also Smart, plus medical Doctor (students), and very sweet, tho not at all weak.
I think there some “soul mates”, who were meant only for each other. Love at first sight. I think of “duprass”, the two-person tribe version of “karass”:
“They were lovebirds. They entertained each other endlessly with little gifts: sights worth seeing out the plane window, amusing or instructive bits from things they read, random recollections of times gone by. They were, I think, a flawless example of what Bokonon calls a duprass, which is a karass composed of only two persons.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/852012-they-were-lovebirds-they-entertained-each-other-endlessly-with-little
Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (only 14 books? Yet I haven’t read them all)
Sometimes I think the nice but somewhat lonely singles are some of those who never quite met their own “love at first sight” / soul mate.
But most times I think that most folk have a range of potential life-long love mates in a wide range of compatibility, with quite low annoying habits requiring adjustment and no “deal-breakers”. But, from experience, keeping the sparks going in a relationship requires both reason-based commitment and day after day effort; sometimes real work.
On the deal-breaking, instead of merely adjustable habit, I suspect too many singles confuse them; and too many couples include one who refuses to adjust (enough).
—
How fast can your eye see? Maybe more than 60 fps.
https://caseguard.com/articles/how-many-frames-per-second-can-the-human-eye-see/
A wild thought – what if time, and life, is digital? Not a nanosecond, nor zeptosecond, but Planck time.
“The Planck time is the time it would take a photon of light travelling at c to move a distance equal to one Planck length. This is therefore the smallest measurement of time that has any meaning. Roughly 5.39 × 10^ {?44} seconds”
So time might be like a film with 5.39 * 10^44 “frames” per second. What’s in between those frames?
Ghosts? God? a non-digital analog reality that we can’t sense? Or some alternate digital reality?
With respect to our 5 senses, some might have a sense of magnetic fields, which it seems that some animals have.
Now back to music, er, Panic! at the Disco (a singer sang one of their songs I didn’t know; can’t have that!)
These romantic posts are nice. I especially liked the previous one. I went back and re-read it very recently.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/08/27/you-stepped-into-my-life/
Sudden love was the topic that Neo homed in on. At the time I had thought, no that never happened to me. But… there was this girl in college that I had dated a few times. Ultimately, a relationship that was not meant to be.
I remember her and the basics of those encounters reasonably well, but I think I had nearly blotted out the fact that when I had first met her I was smitten in 15 seconds. That memory came drifting back to me very recently. A Jewish girl from NYC. Shorter with wild hair and amazing penetrating eyes and a lovely voice. Oh my. What a pity. Now my memory of sudden love is quite vivid.
Imagonna put allaya stories inna book!
Seriously, thanks for the insights into the phenomenon of Love at First Sight and its corollaries.
AesopSpouse’s dad knew the first day he saw that cute girl in middle school that they would get married, which they did in 1946. Lasted 70 years!
Plus a couple more Upstairs since they have both passed on.
I enjoy stories about our apparent sixth sense, or whatever you want to call it.
A friend of mine in college served in Vietnam and was shot, but recovered. Before his family heard from the authorities, his aunt called his mom and said “Charlie has been shot, but he’s going to be okay.” She said she had had a vision of it. After his recovery, Charlie asked his aunt about the vision, and he said she described the scene very accurately, in great detail — the terrain, a hole he fell into, etc.
My mom told the story of the time she started singing a song out of the blue, a jingle for a root-beer place she and my dad had frequented years before, something like J. Hungerford. She didn’t think much of it until my dad got home and told her guess where I went for lunch! J. Hungerford, turns out there still is one! The song came to her mind at the same time he visited the place.
Apparently a lot of cultures have the belief that when you are about to die, someone from your past who is already dead will often show up to guide you. My brother experienced a sort of variation on this when my mom died — he didn’t know she was dying (although she was in a nursing home) but about an hour before he got the call that she had died, he had a sort of visitation from my late father. My brother doesn’t believe in ghosts or anything like that, but he said it was much stronger than a memory, it seemed like a real presence, my dad just sort of checking in to see how he was doing. Quite as if he had stopped by to check on my brother on the way to pick up my mom.
“Imagonna put allaya stories inna book!”
That brings a smile to MY face – since in theory I could sing
In-a-gadda-da-vida https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNBgEirKxq8
(Tho only now I realize it’s NOT in-a-godda…)
The sense of a “presence” is very common in many near-death experiences, as well as religious conversions & revelations.