I always liked the Everly Brothers, though I tended to go for their more upbeat stuff, like “Wake Up, Little Susie” (which I’ve already posted) and “Bye Bye Love” (which I should get around to), as well as the relatively obscure (and frankly dreadful) “Poor Jenny.” I’m not sure how I ended up knowing “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” except that it was a huge hit and kind of unavoidable, and pretty, and was probably one of the songs my sister and I used to sing with friends at night on the beach.

Like most of their early classics, it was composed by the husband and wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, and I just learned that the back-up on their record was Chet Atkins on guitar. Speaking of which…

…I was kind of stymied about what to do with this song, because although I’ve always known it, its charm is in the Everlys’ gorgeous harmony singing, which I couldn’t replicate even if I had a brother. So I put it off till now, when I’m past 400 songs and getting around to things I don’t normally play, and on a dive into 1950s pop hits because I’ve just published a short history of rock ‘n’ roll, which of course includes the Everlys.

Since I don’t normally sing this, I had to find a key and arrangement, and I started out in C, because that’s where I always start out for the basic rock ‘n’ roll ballad chord pattern: C-Am-F-G. As it turned out, that was clearly too low for me to sing, so I tried D… and warning: technical guitar stuff ahead.

My main guitar teacher was Dave Van Ronk, who loved dropped D tuning (like standard tuning, but with the bass string dropped from E to D). Joseph Spence, the Bahamian guitar genius, was even more devoted to that tuning, and between them I got a thorough schooling in it.  So I gave that a shot, and was entranced by the way the chord shapes fell together. Reverend Gary Davis, another hero of mine, was a master at conserving energy by  playing chords that used nearly the same fingering with minimal changes, and in dropped D that basic r’n’r ballad sequence is elegantly simple: start with a barre on the second fret that covers three strings for the D, four strings for the A, and five strings for the Bm, with another finger or three thrown in to finish the chord…

…except, it kept sounding clunky when I went from the D to the Bm in the opening phrase, because I had to lift the barre, and I wanted to let a note ring longer. And then (eureka!) I thought of fingering the Bm Gary Davis style, with the thumb reaching over to the 5th string. I only recently discovered that chord shape — which is weird, because I’d been using the major equivalent for fifty years — and it makes me inexplicably cheerful.

Not that anyone cares, including lots of guitarists, but that made the arrangement sound better and someone may want to pick up on the shape. Or not. I know a lot of folks don’t like those thumb-on-the-fifth-string chords. But for those of us who grew up on Davis, Van Ronk, and Jim Kweskin, they are absolutely basic, and very handy when you need them.

Otherwise, this is just a pretty song. “Only trouble is… (gee whiz)… I’m dreaming my life away.”