The dreamy 1958 hit that became the only song to top all of Billboard’s singles charts simultaneously
Ozzie Nelson was the first singer to ask that we ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’ when he recorded the Gus Kahn song with his Orchestra in 1931 (narrowly beating Wayne King and his Orchestra to record the song just two days earlier).
Roy Orbison sang about where he went and who he talked to every night in his dreams, while Bobby Darin had a ‘Dream Lover’ of his own. The Electric Prunes told us that ‘I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night’, and Dean Martin asked if we might send him the pillow that we dreamed on, so that darling, he could dream on it, too. Eddie Hinton had been called a dreamer, and Bob Dylan had a whopping 115 of them. Randy Newman had a dream, once, too: you were in it, and I was in it with you.
We daydream, and we dream of a better life, a better world, of a new job, a new car, a new lover and new fortune. Some people grow up with dreams of becoming famous or of having a number one hit record, and some people’s dreams really do come true.
When the Everly Brothers began to see enormous chart success in the late 1950s, they weren’t only making their own dreams come true, but those of the husband-and-wife songwriting partnership of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, as well.
Having eloped just five days after meeting in Milwaukee, Boudleaux and Felice felt like they’d known each other a whole lot longer than that. In fact, Felice once said that upon first seeing Boudleaux, she recognised him immediately, having seen his face in a dream when she was eight years old, adding that she had “looked for him forever”. From then on, whenever she wanted him in her arms or to feel his charms, all she had to do was dream.
Through the early part of their marriage, they tried their hand at writing songs for all their favourite country artists, though they didn’t make too much money from their attempts until Little Jimmy Dickens took their song ‘Country Boy’ to number seven on the charts in 1948. With a taste of success under their belt, they relocated to Nashville and began writing songs full-time, but it wasn’t until 1957 that their years of hard work began to truly pay off when The Everly Brothers first recorded one of their songs.
‘Bye Bye Love’, recorded and staggeringly also released in March 1957, topped the US Cash Box Top 100 Singles chart, the US Hot Country Songs and US Record World charts and even went to number five on the Hot R&B Songs chart. The follow up, the innocuous ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ capitalised on that success, topping eight different Billboard sellers and jockey charts on its release (despite an underserved and unnecessary radio ban and boycott) before ‘All I Have to Do is Dream’ completed the hat-trick, when it became the first, and even still, to this day, only song to simultaneously reach number one across all of the major Billboard charts.
Felice’s dream came true when she first met Boudleaux, and now, thanks to the heavenly performances by and popularity of The Everly Brothers, the married couple’s dream of being successful songwriters had come true, too. Since then, their songs have been covered by everybody from Bob Dylan to Cher, Roy Orbison and Ray Charles, Madeleine Peyroux, Norah Jones, Keith Richards and plenty more besides.
Sometimes it really is true, all you have to do is dream.
