excellent charlie louvin profile

from the Tuscaloosa News
Published Sunday, September 30, 2007
BEN WINDHAM: Charlie Louvin has the touch of a warmer era
Southern Lights

There was a time — a warmly remembered time, before the calculations of agents, managers and promoters spread like a glacier over Middle America — when the stars of country music weren’t really separated from the fans.

Some of the stars drove Cadillacs studded with silver dollars and wore suits made by Nudie. But almost anybody could sing like Ernest Tubb, and Faron Young rubbed elbows with Opry patrons at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge.

It was a time when the fans and the stars were pretty much the same people. They had a common language. They lived through the same kinds of traumas. When George Jones sang, knowingly, “If Drinking Don’t Kill Me (Her Memory Will)” the fans knew damn well what it was all about.

Charles McGovern describes the star-fan relationship beautifully in “Honky Tonk,” a collection of Henry Horenstein’s photos of country music stars and fans at the tail end of that golden era (the late 1960s and early ’70s).

“Fans and stars ate together; smoked and joked; swapped photos, recipes, and stories, before and after show time,” McGovern writes. “Stars performed their latest hits, answered requests, for obscure/sB-sides, and hawked souvenirs and songbooks. Afterward, they signed autographs and posed for pictures for hours, before climbing into cars and buses to make the next gig further on up the road. The fans hung on to every note, every phrase, every corny joke and routine.”

Charlie Louvin, 80-year-old star of the Grand Ole Opry and member of the Alabama and country music halls of fame, is still doing it. His appearance in Birmingham a week ago Saturday was like stepping into a time warp.

Second-billed to Lucinda Williams, Louvin had none of the affectations that seem to be the rule for country stars these days. Wearing a straw cowboy hat and street clothes, he ambled on stage with his little band, let the audience know that he grew up in Section, on Sand Mountain, “about 110 miles north of here” and let loose with a program of country songs — and corny jokes — that wouldn’t have sounded out of place at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on a Saturday night 40 or 50 years ago.

That’s exactly where you might have expected to find Charlie Louvin and his brother Ira. Back then, The Louvin Brothers were the most famous close-harmony duo in the history of country music.

Louvin was a stage name. The brothers were Loudermilks (cousins of John D. Loudermilk, who later would become a famed writer of country songs) who grew up on a Sand Mountain farm.

Ira, born in 1924, was three years older than Charlie, but both brothers were musical. They also shared a dislike of farm work and a dream of becoming professional musicians.

Baptized in the haunting harmonies of Sand Mountain’s shape-note singing tradition, the Louvin Brothers developed a style that also echoed the high, lonesome sound of the traditional music of the Appalachians.

Ira composed and sang the high tenor lead vocals (at the Birmingham concert, Charlie said some listeners wondered who the girl was on their hit recordings) while his younger brother played guitar and sang harmony.

From the beginning, the brothers mixed the sacred with the secular, performing traditional songs like “Knoxville Girl” and “In the Pines” alongside deep-dish gospel like “What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul” and “Lord I’m Coming Home.”

The gospel singing was what sprang The Louvin Brothers into the limelight. Ira always felt that his true calling was to be a preacher; and the brothers’ first recording was “The Family Who Prays.”

But the gospel circuit didn’t always pay the bills and the music tended to limit the radio audience, even in the middle of the Bible Belt. Ultimately, the brothers took the observation of a radio sponsor to heart: “You can’t sell tobacco with gospel music.” They began to write and record secular music, including some of the traditional ballads they’d learned on Sand Mountain.

But it was the music they composed themselves, like 1956’s No. 1 hit, “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby,” that went over biggest with the country music fans.

Even today it sounds fresh and exciting, one of those rare blends of modern and traditional.

The brothers became official Opry members in 1955. Among their many popular recordings are “Cash on the Barrelhead,” “Little Reasons,” “You’re Running Wild” and “When I Stop Dreaming.”

They also continued to record hard-shell religious music like their “Satan is Real” album, released in 1959. The album’s cover, featuring the brothers against a backdrop of burning coals and a cardboard cutout of the devil, is one of the hokiest ever, contributing to its status today as a high-dollar collector’s item.

The devil in The Louvin Brothers’ professional world, however, turned out to be rock ’n’ roll. By the early ’60s, their sound was passe, and they broke up in 1964.

Charlie had moderate success as a singles artist. Ira wasn’t as lucky.

Shortly after the split, he was shot during an alcohol-fueled argument with his third wife, Faye, and nearly died. The next year, he, his new wife, Anne, and four other people died when a drunken driver plowed into their automobile — on a Sunday.

Charlie soldiered on solo, though his music wasn’t selling much tobacco or anything else. The big freeze-out was beginning to sweep over Nashville, burying current hit makers in strings, voices and brass and sidelining many of the stars of yesteryear.

Then a funny thing happened. Rock ’n’ roll had killed off The Louvin Brothers, but it was rock that saved Charlie.

On stage in Birmingham, Louvin specifically credited rocker Gram Parsons for leading a revival of interest in his music.

A Florida native (and a kinsman of former Alabama First Lady Cornelia Wallace,) Parsons had devils of his own. But he was a rare musical talent and, as a member of The Byrds, the driving spirit behind the revered country-rock album, “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.” One of the songs Parsons brought to the album was “I Like the Christian Life,” The Louvin Brothers’ moralistic ode to clean living.

The Byrds may have sung it with tongues in cheeks, but Parson’s love of the Louvins’ music was genuine. His girlfriend, Emmylou Harris, carried on the torch after Parson’s untimely, drug-related death with her true-blue recording of “If I Could Only Win Your Love.” It was her first hit and one of many Louvin tunes that she regularly featured on her albums and in concerts.

The Louvin sound was hot again. Artists ranging from the cowpunk band Rank and File to sensitive songster James Taylor covered Louvin recordings, giving Charlie a comfortable living off the royalties.

He kept his hand in performing, too. In 2003, he joined the college rock band Cake for its national tour, which also featured Cheap Trick.

But since Ira’s death, he’s seldom had a musical partner as attuned to his Southern sensibilities as Williams. They sang her “Get Right With God” as Williams’ final encore and she jigged a little country square dance with Charlie during the instrumental sections.

But it was Louvin’s opening set that set the time machine in motion. He did a few numbers off his fine new album on Tompkins Square Records, “Charlie Louvin.” His voice showed its age at times, but it was amazingly strong and got better as the show went on.

It was on the older pieces that he really hit his stride. He sang a beautiful version of “The Christian Life.” And his rendition of “The Great Atomic Power” — a fabulous Louvin Brothers song — outclassed his re-recording of it with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy on his new album and came close to matching the pulse-racing kick of the early ’50s original: “Are you ready / for the great atomic power? / Will you rise and meet your savior in the air?”

Then — like a true country star of his era — Louvin announced that after his set was over he would be available for autographs and pictures.

I burned a path from my balcony perch at the Alabama Theater down to the lobby. I was first in line when Louvin arrived at the merchandise table.

I selected a CD of Louvin Brothers gospel songs for Charlie to sign. He got right down to business, whipping out a pocketknife, cutting the wrapper off and asking how I’d like it autographed.

“Best to Ben. Charlie Louvin,” he wrote over a picture of The Louvin Brothers posed against a rail fence.

“Hey Mr. Louvin, can I get a photo?” a fan yelled across the table.

“Sure,” Charlie said. He flashed a Cheshire cat grin and shook hands with the young man as a buddy snapped away.

That started a chain reaction. People lined up with their disposables, Instamatics or cell phone cameras; some of them also clutched CDs or even little slips of paper for Charlie to sign.

A few just wanted to shake hands and chat with a legend.

“I’ve been to Henager,” one woman said. Louvin smiled at the reference to the Sand Mountain community.

“One hundred and ten miles away,” he replied.

A hundred and ten miles and half a century away from a world where Charlie Louvin is an anomaly, a survivor of a warm, golden era.

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