The Browns’ biggest hit, “The Three Bells (Les Trios Cloches)”, has to be among the least unexpected, just plain weirdest successes in the annals of country pop. A Swiss ballad first made famous throughout Europe by French chanteuse Edith Piaf, “The Three Bells” is the homely sketch of country boy Jimmy Brown, told via snapshot verses of his small-town congregation in prayer at birth, marriage and death. Jim Ed Brown unspools the story slowly, sweetly, while his sisters Bonnie and Ella Maxine “bong, bong, bong” in high harmony behind. Proving that a country sensibility and country harmony could appeal nationwide, “The Three Bells” topped both the pop and country charts in 1959, and even cracked the R&B top-10.
It’s also precisely the sort of Nashville Sound recording that drives country’s twang fundamentalists insane. What’s interesting about this 21-track Browns collection, then, is how it provides a context by which “The Three Bells” sounds entirely of a piece with the trio’s eight sibling-harmony focused, twang-heavy preceding chart entries, as well as with the several hits that followed it. Those earlier records typically sound like a cross between the Davis Sisters and the Louvin Brothers; indeed, the Browns scored with versions of Charlie & Ira’s “I Take The Chance” and “Just As Long As You Love Me”. And the trio’s later releases are often close kin to the early-’60s balladry of the Everly Brothers. All of which is to say that if you thought you hated the Browns, this disc just might change your mind.
