It’s a warm June evening and we’re sitting on the patio smoking
Luckies and drinking Schlafly’s, the local microbrew. That is, I’m
drinking and Charlie Louvin is smoking. I don’t smoke and Charlie
doesn’t drink, but then Charlie Louvin’s never needed anything to
loosen his tongue.
Right now he’s telling the one about the “little ol’ Sunday
school teacher” who didn’t drink or smoke, because “what would she
tell her Sunday School class?” Despite this she has no problem
jumping in the hay with a total stranger. The next morning the
amazed stranger asks, “What will you tell your Sunday school
class?” to which she responds, “Same thing I always tell them. You
don’t have to smoke or drink to have a good time!”
You can tell Charlie Louvin, who turns 81 on July 7, is having a
heck of a good time. A lot of performers, if they live long enough,
are granted a strange kind of respect, whether they deserve it or
not.
I doubt you’d find too many people who would deny Charlie Louvin
his recent recognition, which has included two Grammys for a Louvin
Brothers tribute album, frequent guest appearances at the Grand Ole
Opry, the opening of a Louvin Brothers’ museum, a new duets album
with the likes of George Jones and Tift Merritt, and invitations to
play large rock festivals and tour with Cheap Trick and Cake.
But even with the belated recognition Charlie Louvin remains as
down-to-earth as they come. No doubt because fame never bothered
much with him, nor he with it.
I’d rather drink Schlafly’s and listen to an old time country
musician tell stories than any thing else I can think of. And
Charlie Louvin’s stories are some of the best I’ve ever heard,
particularly the ones that describe growing up on a farm in the
Alabama hill country, and the early days with his brother Ira
before record deals and the Grand Ole Opry, when the brothers made
their living performing live on stations like WROL and WNOX
Knoxville.
They were born Charlie Elzer and Ira Lonnie Loudermilk on Sand
Mountain on the southern tip of the Appalachian mountains, and
raised Hell-is-Real Baptists. (Later the now kitschy album
“Satan is Real,” somewhat reminiscent of the best
southern gothic tales of Flannery O’Conner, became their best-known
album.)
The Loudermilks’ father was a dirt farmer who sometimes strummed
the banjo, and Charlie tells how Ira once snuck the instrument out
of the window so he could join the kids after school for a
hootenanny, and got his backside tanned for it, while I’m thinking
how hard it is just to get my son to sit for five minutes at his
piano.
Charlie has literally hundreds of stories that he has honed over
the years at the Louvin Brothers Museum in Nashville, each one a
bit of historical Americana. He tells about learning shape-note
singing at the local Baptist church — and none of these simple,
childlike songs they sing nowadays, written so as not to traumatize
five-year-old girls, but creepy close harmony tunes like “Are you
Washed in the Blood?” and “Sinner, You’d Better Get Ready.”
We’ve only got so much time before he departs (in more ways than
one) so we’re pumping Charlie for more stories. He seems happy to
oblige. He tells about the time his father came home from a swap
meet with a stack of 78’s (“Our old man could take one dog to a
swap meet and come home with five.”) There were records by the
Delmore Brothers, the Monroe Brothers and the Blue Sky Boys, and
Fiddlin’ Sid Harkreader.
Charlie and Ira wanted to listen to them all, but they were
ordered to bed. So, “We waited till the folks went to sleep, then
we got out the Victrola, tore a straw from the broom, clenched it
between our teeth and placed it between the grooves. If you stop up
your ears you can really hear it. We listened to a lot of records
that way.”
IRA WAS THE TROUBLED one, a black sheep with the high lonesome alto
who wrote some of the best country and gospel songs, well,
ever.
He also had a temper like a firecracker. Charlie remembers how
Ira would come over with a new song, a song he’d never heard
before, and if Charlie didn’t get the notes right on the first or
second try Ira would crumble up the song and throw it away. How
many country classics were lost that way?
Mandolins were lost too. If a mandolin string worked itself out
of tune Ira would smash the instrument to pieces on stage and stomp
on the pieces. Later he’d sweep the pieces and rebuild it even
better. Ira seemed to go to pieces when the Louvins took up country
music and gained a modicum of success. He felt he’d sold his soul
to the devil. His temper worsened, as did his drinking. He would
alternately preach at and curse the audiences.
A few years earlier the Louvins had toured with an opening act,
a charismatic Mississippi kid named Presley. One night before a
show the kid told Ira how much he loved their gospel music. (“If
that’s true,” snapped Ira, “why do you play black music?”) Not that
it mattered. In a few years that kid would be crowned the king, and
the Presley-era would spell the doom for old time country gospel
acts.
Ira’s constant struggle with his personal demons would lead to
the Louvin Brothers break-up in 1963, and cost him three marriages.
Faye Louvin, wife number three, got so fed up with Ira that once
after he tried to choke her she fetched a revolver and opened fire
hitting him three to five times in the back (accounts vary).
Being a professional singer of tragic songs, Charlie doesn’t
mind talking about his older brother’s death at the age of 41. Ira
was on his way home from a gig in Kansas City on Father’s Day,
1965. There was construction on Highway 70 and it was down to one
lane. Ira and his fourth wife, Anne Young, were traveling just
outside of Williamsburg, Missouri when they were hit head on by a
drunken driver. Both were killed instantly.
After a brief silence it’s time to get off the heavy stuff, and
we change the subject to the new self-titled album. On it Charlie
Louvin sings duets of Louvin Brothers’ hits with George “Possum”
Jones, Tom T. Hall, Bobby Bare, Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy and a
few people Charlie had never heard of like Tift Merritt. (“I
thought that was a guy.”)
Someone comments on Marty Stuart’s haunting mandolin on
“Knoxville Girl,” an old English folk song he learned from his
mother. “Marty was only supposed to play on one or two songs, but
he stayed and played on every one. Afterward I said, hold on, I got
to pay you, and he put away his mandolin and said, ‘You just
did.’”
We could go on like this all night — or at least till the
Schlafly’s holds out — but it comes time for Charlie Louvin to
take the stage. He stubs out his Lucky Strike and winks at my
girlfriend. “You got a license to carry those?” She laughs and
says, “Dirty old man!”
As we’re heading in, he turns to me and says, “There’s an old
hill country saying that people are either like horses or mules. A
horse will only work till he gets tired then he will lie down. But
a mule will work till it drops dead. Guess which one I am?”
