Felice and Boudleaux's songs sold 500 million copies around the world

Bryant, who wrote many classic country and rock 'n' roll songs with her husband Boudleaux Bryant, died at her home in Gatlinburg, Tennessee on Tuesday after being diagnosed with cancer. She was 77.

She wrote or co-wrote more than 800 songs with more than half-a-billion sales around the world, a spokesman from the performing rights society BMI said.

Apart from the hits recorded by the Everly Brothers, Bryant's songs were also recorded by Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, the Beach Boys, Tony Bennett, Simon & Garfunkel, Ray Charles and Roy Orbison.

She wrote Raining In My Heart for Buddy Holly and the country standard Rocky Top.

She and Boudleaux, who died in 1987 at the age of 67, were inducted into the Country Hall of Fame in 1991.

Born Matilda Genevieve Scaduto in 1925, Bryant met her future husband while working as a lift attendant in a hotel in Milwaukee in 1946. They eloped two days later.

Boudleaux started setting his wife's poetry to music, and the pair had their first hit in 1949 with Country Boy, recorded by Little Jimmie Dickens.

The pair wrote the first two number ones for The Everly Brothers

Moving to the country music capital of Nashville in 1950, the pair were widely regarded as being the first artists to move there to make a career solely as songwriters.

As well as the many songs she wrote with her husband, Bryant wrote hits herself, including We Could, a standard recorded by artists such as Jim Reeves, George Jones and Tammy Wynette.

In 1957 the Bryants scored two number one hits in the US with two songs for the harmony vocal duo The Everly Brothers - Bye Bye Love and Wake Up Little Susie. The Bryants provided many more of their early hits as well.

Bryant is survived by her two sons, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.