Everly Brothers "Wake up Lil' Suzie" cover
 

This is my cover of the Everly Brother's "Wake Up Lil' Suzie" published in 1957. I am also singing harmony and have added some percussion. This is a fun song to sing! The guitar is a Gibson Advanced Jumbo. Thanks very much for watching! :)

- Glenn

Hi Glenn.....you're on a roll this week! :D Fun and rhythm at full tilt....great production on those two songs!
Over time, one realizes you have an awesome guitar collection! Lots of great choices to turn out your very best.
Thanks for posting!
Fred

Thank you Fred!

I appreciate your comments!

Regarding guitars, I used to play "Wake up Lil' Suzie" on my '67 Martin D-35, so I tried that today before doing this recording. And it sounded good. Then I tried the Guild 12-string, and that sounded good, too. Then I thought, well, the Everly Brothers used Gibson 6-strings, so maybe I should try that AJ. And sure enough, it really had the best sound for this song, at least in my opinion.

It's a fun song. Thanks for taking the time to comment Fred!

- Glenn

Woo HOO!!!! Love it! Keep the Everly Brothers coming. How about Til I kissed Ya? Crying in the Rain?

You’ve inspired me to work a couple up for my next gig. I do Bye Bye Love. Need to learn more!!

Wow, Glenn! You're having a busy week with the Everly Brothers and doing a fine job at it, too. Very nicely performed!

Your editing and mixing skills are very good. How much time do you spend in post on putting these together? On my woodworking channel on YouTube I often video a 20-30 minute portion of a larger project but it's not uncommon to spend 2-3 hours putting all the camera views together, creating and editing voice-overs, etc.

David

Hi Marty!

I hoped you would like this! Thanks so much for your comments!

And you are right -- "Till I kissed Ya" and "Crying in the Rain" are both excellent Everly Brothers songs to try and they are among my favorites.

And if I have inspired you, that is really something special! Very cool! :)

Thanks so much for the support!

- Glenn

Hi David,

Thanks so much for your comments and your kind support! I'm so glad you thought this came out okay. :)

This is a song I already knew from the past, so getting the first video and audio recording with me singing the lead vocal part and the guitar part took about 45 minutes, maybe an hour. Then I listened to the recording to make sure all was well, adjusted levels on the mixer, and then I added harmony.

I had never sung this harmony before -- my wife used to sing the harmony -- so I had to learn it by singing with the Everly Brothers a bit. So that probably took about 10 minutes, because the harmony is fairly predictable, just a little on the high side. So then I recorded the harmony and that took probably another 2 hours. I record two harmony tracks and pan them full left and full right, kind of Simon and Garfunkel style. It makes everything sound a little thicker.

Then I added some percussion with the cajon using brushes. That took about 20 minutes and then I added the shaker and that took another half hour.

Then I had to use automation in Cubase to deal with the ups and downs of various voices and the guitar. Setting that all up to do a mixdown probably took an hour.

Once I had the mixdown complete and all the various videos of parts uploaded to my computer, then I loaded in Adobe Premier Elements and started the video programming. I think it took me about an hour, maybe an hour and a half to do the video programming. I am fairly fast at video programming because I have done it a lot in recent years.

So if I add all those times up it took me about 6 1/2 hours to do the entire project. I started at about 10 AM and finished at about 4:30 PM. I worked through this time without taking much in the way of breaks since my wife was gone and I had the time to invest.

Thanks for your interest, David!

- Glenn

This made my day! Some later Everly Brothers songs I wish you would consider doing would be “On The Wings of a Nightingale” and “Arms of Mary”.

Hi Dreadfulnaught!

Thanks so much for your comments here! How delightful that this song made you day! How very cool!!! :)

I will go look up “On The Wings of a Nightingale” and “Arms of Mary”. I don't remember those songs, but you never know -- they might fit me just right! :)

Thanks again for your comments!

- Glenn

Again great job Glenn. Thanks for sharing.

Mike

Thanks Mike!

Thanks for watching! I appreciate your comments!

- Glenn

Love that song to death
Back in the day one of my good friends, girlfriend was Suzie and we used to wail out that song in the basement .
Gotta say I am impressed with your harmonizing the vocals .. Something I would like to do but cant seem to master .

hi Kev!

Thank you very much! I really appreciate your kind words of support! And, I, too, love this song! I had a cousin we called Suzie, and I could really see her in this situation of falling asleep in the theater and getting into trouble over something so innocent. :)

And thank you for you kind words on the harmony. My wife, who is a good alto, used to sing these harmonies for the Everly Brothers songs years ago, so I had never tried to sing the Phil Everly harmony lines until just recently for these recordings. So these songs have been experiments to see if I could do it. Fortunately, Phil didn't sing too much into the stratosphere, so his tenor lines are manageable with some practice.

The hardest part about singing harmony with myself is my unpredictable phrasing of words. I tend to give myself a lot of room to fit words into the music. My wife, who is used to singing in high powered choral groups, takes a much more disciplined approach to singing harmony and the need to sing things straight. She has always been pretty frustrated with my phrasing liberties, which makes it hard to keep the words together during a live performance. She knows that now that I am singing with myself that I am finally experiencing her frustrations. At least with a recording, I can do it over until I get the words all together.

Thanks again Kevin! :)

- Glenn

Excellent Glenn! :up:
This Everly Revival is awesome. :D
Great memories. Great songs.

Thank you Vance! I appreciate your comments -- I'm glad you feel that these songs are worth covering!

- Glenn