B-side "Always It's You" Format Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM Length 2:22 | Released April 1960 Genre Pop Label Warner Bros. | |
"Cathy's Clown" is a popular song, written and recorded by The Everly Brothers, in which the singer informs Cathy that "[I] don't want your love anymore."
Contents
Recording
The musicians included the Everlys on guitars, Floyd Cramer on piano, Floyd Chance on bass and Buddy Harman on drums. The distinctive drum sound was achieved by recording the drums with a tape loop, making it sound as if there were two drummers.
History
"Cathy's Clown" was The Everly Brothers' first single for Warner Bros., after they had recorded for Archie Bleyer's Cadence label for three years. It sold eight million copies worldwide, spending five weeks at number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and one week on the R&B chart. It spent seven weeks at number one on the UK Singles Chart in May and June 1960. It was the Everly Brothers' biggest-selling single and their third and final U.S. number 1 hit. Billboard ranked it as the number 3 song of the year for 1960.
In 2004, the song was ranked 149th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Associations
"Cathy's Clown" was inspired by Ferde Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite. It was a major influence on the Beatles, who — having "once toyed with calling themselves The Foreverly Brothers" — three years later re-created the song's vocal arrangement in their first U.S. single, "Please Please Me".
"Cathy's Clown" is mentioned in the opening line of Elliott Smith's song "Waltz 2 (XO)", the title track of his 1998 album XO.
Jan and Dean recorded a cover of "Cathy's Clown" for their album Filet of Soul, but Liberty Records rejected both set lists that included the song. Liberty later selected its own set list, which did not include "Cathy's Clown", and released it shortly after Jan Berry's crash near Deadman's Curve. Jan & Dean's cover of "Cathy's Clown" is still currently unreleased.
The Meat Puppets released a cover version of "Cathy's Clown" as a split 7-inch single, with "Hey Baby, Que Paso" (a Texas Tornados cover) as the A-side. It is a staple in the band's set lists as of 2013
Reba McEntire cover version
"Cathy's Clown" was covered by the country music artist Reba McEntire for her album Sweet Sixteen. In 1989, McEntire's version became her thirteenth number-one single on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Unlike the original, McEntire sang the song in the third person, thus making the narrator another woman observing the story.
The video accompanying her version of the song was produced in an Old West setting. Bruce Boxleitner appears in the video as the clown.
Other versions
The song was covered by Bill and Boyd in New Zealand; their version reached number 1 on the Lever Hit Parades chart in that country in July 1960. Another cover, by the English singer Dick Jordon, reached number 5 in New Zealand.