Felice (Scaduto) Bryant, with her classically trained violin player/turned country and jazz fiddler husband, became a song writing duo, that penned over 800 songs, and were second only to Lieber and Stoller during the 50's.
Their tunes included the Everly Brothers, recordings of "Wake Up, Little Susie,","Bye Bye Love", "Problems", and "Take a Message to Mary", Buddy Holly's "Raining in My Heart", and Little Jimmy Dickens' 1949 recording of "Country Boy".
Over the decades, their songs have been performed by Elvis Presley, Cher, Linda Ronstadt, R.E.M., Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Carl Smith, Frankie Laine, Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves, among others.
Curiously enough, one of their most famous songs, "Rocky Top," a humorous ode to a mythical mountain in the Volunteer State, written in about 10 minutes, in 1972, It's been played at every UT game since.
"Rocky Top" was played 88 TIMES !!!!, during a six-overtime game with Arkansas last year!!!!!!
Born in Milwaukee,
WI, Felice passed on in Gatlinburg TN.
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FELICE BRYANT,77;
SONGWRITER PENNED POP HITS OF 1950's
Los Angeles
Times
By Richard
Cromelin
Times Staff
Writer
April 23,
2003
Songwriter Felice Bryant, whose lyrics provided 1950s teenagers with dreamy romance and comical scandal and two decades later gave University of Tennessee football fans a rousing fight song, died Tuesday at her home in Gatlinburg, Tenn. She was 77 and had been suffering from cancer.
With her late husband, Boudleaux Bryant, Felice wrote approximately 800 recorded songs, including the hits that made the Everly Brothers one of the biggest acts in early rock 'n' roll. Among them was the snappy "Wake Up, Little Susie," which depicted a panicky adolescent wondering what friends and family will think after he and his date fall asleep at the movies.
By capturing the teenage experience in a brisk narrative and setting it to a snappy rhythm, the record topped the charts for four weeks in 1957, one of the many pinnacles that made the Bryants perhaps second only to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller ("Hound Dog," "Jailhouse Rock") among that decade's great songwriting teams.
The Everlys also scored with the couple's "Bye Bye Love," "Problems" and "Take a Message to Mary," while on his own Boudleaux contributed "All I Have to Do Is Dream," "Bird Dog," "Love Hurts" and other songs to their discography. Buddy Holly recorded their "Raining in My Heart."
Recordings of their songs have sold an estimated 500 million copies worldwide, and the couple were named to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1991.
"It's got to be a good marriage of the music, the lyric and the performer," she said, describing the key to songwriting in a 1999 interview. " Songs are like people — if it is in the wrong company then it is drained.
"Bryant was born Matilda Genevieve Scaduto in Milwaukee. She had done some performing as a child and teenager, but was working as a hotel elevator attendant when she met the touring Boudleaux Bryant, a classical violinist turned country and jazz fiddler from Georgia.
They eloped two days later and soon began writing for their amusement, eventually hooking up with Nashville's Acuff-Rose publishing house. Their first hit was Little Jimmy Dickens' 1949 recording of "Country Boy," and they went on to supply material for such country and pop stars as Carl Smith, Frankie Laine, Eddy Arnold and Jim Reeves. Over the decades, their songs have been performed by Linda Ronstadt, R.E.M., Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Elvis Presley and Cher, among others.
One of their most famous songs, though, is known not from a recording but from performances by the University of Tennessee band during football games. The couple wrote "Rocky Top," a humorous ode to a mythical mountain in the Volunteer State, in about 10 minutes during a marathon songwriting session, and it was played by the school band for the first time at the 1972 Tennessee-Alabama game.
It's been played at every UT game since. According to the Knoxville News-Sentinel, it was played 88 times during a six-overtime game with Arkansas last year.
Boudleaux Bryant died in 1987 at the age of 67. Felice lived quietly in Gatlinburg, where she wrote plays that included musical numbers.
"I want people to remember I was here and that I contributed a thing or two," she said in a 1999 interview.
Survivors include her sons Dane Bryant and Del Bryant, four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and a sister.
Felice
Bryant, 77; Songwriter Penned Pop Hits of 1950s
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-bryant
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