Phil Everly

LOS ANGELES — There is no more beautiful sound than the voices of siblings swirled together in high harmony, and when Phil and Don Everly combined their voices with songs about yearning, angst and loss, it changed the world.

Phil Everly, the youngest of the Everly Brothers who took the high notes, died Friday from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 74.

He left a towering legacy that still inspires half a century after The Everly Brothers’ first hit.

You could argue that while Elvis Presley was the king of rock ’n’ roll, Phil and Don Everly were its troubled princes. They sang dark songs hidden behind deceptively pleasing harmonies and were perfect interpreters of the twitchy hearts of millions of baby boomer teens coming of age in the 1950s and ’60s looking to express themselves beyond the simple platitudes of the pop music of the day.

Their hit records included “Wake Up Little Susie” and the era-identifying “Bye Bye Love.”

In all, the brothers’ career spanned five decades, although they performed separately from 1973 to 1983.

In their heyday between 1957 and 1962, they had 19 top 40 hits.

The two broke up amid quarreling in 1973 after 16 years of hits, then reunited in 1983, “sealing it with a hug,” Phil Everly said.

Although their number of hit records declined in the late 1980s, they made successful concert tours in this country and Europe.