About The Song
Take a Message to Mary by The Everly Brothers arrived in 1959 as a single on Cadence Records, with “Poor Jenny” sitting on the B-side. It spent 13 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, climbing to No. 16, while also reaching No. 8 on Canada’s CHUM Hit Parade and No. 20 on the UK’s New Musical Express chart. The song later turned up on their 1960 collection The Fabulous Style of The Everly Brothers, giving fans a chance to hear it alongside other early favorites.
Felice and Boudleaux Bryant wrote it, continuing the steady stream of hits they had been handing the brothers since “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie.” The Bryants had a knack for turning small, everyday heartaches into songs that felt bigger than life, and this one fit right into that pattern. It tells the story of a man locked up after a careless mistake—some accounts mention a gunshot that went wrong—who asks a friend to carry a message to his sweetheart, Mary. He wants her told he’s gone to see the world, that the wedding is off, and that she should move on and find someone new. He just can’t bring himself to say he’s in jail. The song ends with him quietly admitting how cold his cell feels, knowing he has lost the one thing that mattered most.
The single came out right in the middle of the Everlys’ golden Cadence run, sandwiched between “Problems” and “(Till) I Kissed You.” It never quite reached the Top 10 in the States, but it still earned solid radio play and showed the brothers could deliver a quiet, heartbreaking story with the same ease they brought to their brighter up-tempo hits. One small studio detail that has stuck with fans is the spare arrangement: during this period the band often kept things minimal, and on this track they even used a screwdriver tapped against a Coke bottle for percussion.
Don and Phil performed the song on television, including an appearance on The Chevy Show in April 1959, where their close harmonies turned the sad tale into something radio audiences couldn’t forget. Over the years it has quietly earned a reputation as one of their more underrated 1959 singles—never as massive as some of their chart-toppers, but the kind of track that stayed with listeners who dug deeper into the catalog. It has since appeared on countless compilations, a steady reminder of how naturally the Everlys could take a Bryant song about regret and loss and make it feel personal.
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Lyric
These are the words of a frontier lad
Who lost his love when he turned bad
Take a message to Mary but don’t tell her where I am
Take a message to Mary but don’t say I’m in a jam
You can tell her I had to see the world or tell her that my ship set sail
You can say she’d better not wait for me but don’t tell her I’m in jail
Oh, don’t tell her I’m in jail
Take a message to Mary but don’t tell her what I’ve done
Please don’t mention the stagecoach and the shot from a careless gun
You can tell her I had to change my plans and cancel out the wedding day
But please don’t mention my lonely cell where I’m gonna pine away
Until my dying day
Take a message to Mary but don’t tell her all you know
My heart’s achin’ for Mary, Lord knows I miss her so
Just tell her I went to Timbuktu, tell her I’m searchin’ for gold
You can say she’d better find someone new to cherish and to hold
Oh, Lord, this cell is cold
Mary, Mary
Oh, Lord this cell is cold