Harmony

Yesterday while I was preparing one of my meals, I was listening to my Statler Brothers album. I'm one of those people who still has a large collection of vinyl records, and still listens to them. This particular album is "The Best of the Statler Bros.," and came out in about 1975. It features on the cover a formal portrait of the wives of the four "brothers" (two of them, Don and Harold Reid, actually were brothers, although nobody's name was Statler), in old-fashioned dresses and hairdos. A note on the cover says that the contents of the album was Mercury's (recording company's) idea of the "best of" the Statler Bros., but the pictures on the outside were what they themselves considered the best aspects of themselves. Hokey, but cute.

Anyway, this is a great album, truly representing "the best of." And what these brothers were so good at were clever lyrics – they at least co-wrote every song on this album – and harmony. I can remember the first time I heard "Flowers on the Wall," on a car radio – I was a know-nothing teenager, but I recognized clever, original lyrics when I heard them. ("Countin' flowers on the wall/that don't bother me at all./Playin' solitaire 'til dawn/with a deck of 51./Smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo/Now don't tell me/I've nothin' to do...") And these lyrics were sung to a chipper tune that belied the singer's lovesick misery. Irony in a country-music song – hah! Actually, I was hearing this on a rock station; the song was an early example of the kind of cross-over song – part country, part rock – that you hear all the time now.

But the big thing with these guys was their harmonizing. Their arrangements melded their voices together so beautifully, so perfectly. Like the chorus on "Susan When She Tried" ("No there's never/been another/who could make me weak inside/and give me/what I needed/like Susan when she tried") – all those voices, every one of them a good, and distinctive voice, rolling over, under, around one another.

In this masterful use of the different voices the Statler Brothers' arrangements were like those of another group for whom I have a big liking: the Everly Brothers (yes, yes, I know I'm talking Golden Oldies here). Their "Greatest Hits of" album, that features on the cover a picture of them not in their 1950s pompadours, but their early-70s longish hair and peasant shirts, has example after example of their wonderful, if more adolescently adenoidal harmonizing. I have this album, too, and was listening to it just the other night. You can't beat "Gone, Gone, Gone" for the harmonics throughout, not to mention a high energy level and great guitar-playing. Or the harmony on the falling notes of the chorus of "Kathy's Clown" ("Don't want your lu-uh-uh-ove anymore/Don't want your ki-ii-ii-isses/That's for sure./I die each time/I hear this sound/Here he cuh-uh-uh-omes/that's Kathy's clown/that's Kathy's clown...) Supposedly the Everly Brothers' harmonies influenced the Beatles!

It's occurred to me that a really good relationship should feature this same kind of harmony. Each of you "singing" at the level you sing best, and the differences complimenting each other. I used to say about my husband and me, that we were a perfect example of opposites attracting. This was certainly problematic at times; how could it help but be? But when we got it right – when he helped me to relax by being playful, when I helped him to be a good citizen by assuming we would recycle, would go vote, would pay our bills – when he drove and I read the map – when he cooked and I washed the dishes...it was beautiful harmony.

Sometimes a melody isn't enough; you need that harmony.