Wisconsin isn’t typically thought of as being at the heart of country music, but did you know that half of one of country’s greatest songwriting duos is from Milwaukee? As Justin Barney tells us, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant are members of the Country Music Hall of Fame, and co-wrote “Rocky Top,” the state song of Tennessee. But first, they met in a dream in Milwaukee.
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I’m standing in an elevator in the Hilton Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And in this elevator, one of the greatest love stories in all of music happened.
In 1945, Matilda Scaduto worked in this elevator. She was a 19 year-old Sicilian girl in Milwaukee. And one day, Boudleaux Bryant, a touring musician, got on to this elevator. And as he walked on, she said, “I’ve been looking for you.”
She had been seeing Boudleaux Bryant in her dreams! Here he was in front of her! He was charmed. Who wouldn’t be? It was love at first sight.
Five days later, they got married. Matilda became known as Felice Bryant. In 1950, they moved to Nashville, Tennessee.
Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, 1960s. Photo by Bing T. Gee. (Courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum)
“They lived in a trailer in Nashville, Tennessee,” said Paul Kingsbury, senior director of Editorial and Interpretation at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
In their honeymoon phase they wrote this little song together — “Country Boy” by Little Jimmy Dickens — and it became a hit.
“They were essentially the first full-time professional songwriters in Nashville,” said Kingsbury.
They were song writers, not performers, which meant that they needed to sell their songs to musicians — which is difficult. But the Bryants were smart and they cooked up a little scheme. They invited musicians into that trailer of theirs.
“Felice would cook a wonderful Italian dinner. Maybe it was spaghetti and meatballs. Maybe it was chicken cacciatore,” said Kingsbury. “Then Boudleaux would break out his guitar and sing their latest songs. Inevitably, the people who came in, they were charmed. And often the Bryants got a recording out of that. They did it enough times that Felice like to refer to it as their ‘pasta scam.'”
Things really took off when they sold the song “Bye Bye Love” to the Everly Brothers.
“The Everly Brothers said they would have been working manual labor jobs if it hadn’t been for the Bryants coming along with that song and several of the other hits they wrote for the Everlys,” said Kingsbury.
And write, they did. Thousands of songs written and recorded by some of the biggest names in music history.
Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, 1970s. (Courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum)
“Elvis Presley, Ray Charles and Bob Dylan, the Beatles. Paul McCartney has said he felt like the Bryants and the Everlys were a big influence on what he and John Lennon, the Beatles were trying to do,” said Kingsbury.
And they wrote some iconic songs that spanned decades and genres, like “Love Hurts” by Roy Orbison, which became a mega hit by Nazareth in 1974. Their love story has been memorialized in the book, “Nashville’s Songwriting Sweethearts: The Boudleaux and Felice Bryant Story” by fellow part-time Wisconsinites, musicians — and sweethearts — Bobbie Malone and Bill C. Malone.
“I think what makes a Bryant song is that it’s not belabored and it’s clever. They had a way of telling three minute stories where you felt like, ‘Oh, I know exactly what’s going on,” said Kingbury.
The Bryants’ love story, musical accomplishments and legacy is the stuff of dreams. And in fact, it started with Felice meeting the literal man of her dreams in an elevator in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
They wrote the song “All I Have To Do Is Dream” by The Everly Brothers, one of their biggest, about that dream.
