Charlie Louvin

He was born Charles Elzer Loudermilk on 7 July 1927 in Section, Alabama, one of seven children who grew up on the family’s small farm on Sand Mountain, near Henagar; the songwriter John D. Loudermilk was a first cousin. The brothers worked the fields and sang together as teenagers, drawing their harmony from the shape-note singing of their church, and when Ira got a mandolin at nineteen he urged sixteen-year-old Charlie to learn guitar. They first performed as the Radio Twins in 1942, worked in Chattanooga with a band called the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1943, and in 1947, at WROL in Knoxville, took the name Louvin Brothers. Charlie’s service in the Army Air Forces at the end of the Second World War, and later in the Korean War, interrupted the act; for a time the brothers worked as postal clerks in Memphis while playing on radio.

Their first records, for Apollo in 1947, Decca in 1949 and MGM in 1951–52, were mostly their own gospel songs, among them “The Weapon of Prayer” and “The Great Atomic Power.” Capitol signed them in September 1952, and they stayed with the label until they broke up. They joined the Opry in 1955 and, told by a sponsor that gospel music did not sell tobacco, turned to secular songs of their own: “When I Stop Dreaming” (1955) was their first Top Ten hit and “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby” their only No. 1. In their singing Ira’s high tenor usually rode above Charlie’s melody, though the parts sometimes changed places within a song. From 1955 to 1962 they had about a dozen hits, among them “You’re Running Wild,” “Cash on the Barrel Head,” “My Baby’s Gone” and “Knoxville Girl,” and their albums included Tragic Songs of Life (1956), Satan Is Real (1959) and A Tribute to the Delmore Brothers (1960). Sales fell in the late 1950s, and growing tension between the brothers ended the partnership in August 1963. Ira died in a car crash in Missouri on 20 June 1965.

Charlie stayed with Capitol as a solo singer. At his first session, on 11 February 1964 at the Columbia studio in Nashville, he cut “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” which reached No. 4 that year, and “See the Big Man Cry” went to No. 7 in 1965; both songs are on his first album, Less and Less and I Don’t Love You Anymore (December 1964). Marvin Hughes produced most of his sessions through 1966. Capitol albums such as Will You Visit Me on Sundays?, The Kind of Man I Am (1969), Here’s a Toast to Mama and Ten Times Charlie followed, and from 1970 he recorded duets with Melba Montgomery, produced by George Richey and Pete Drake; “Something to Brag About” reached No. 18. In all he had thirty singles on Billboard’s country chart between 1964 and 1989, including one with Emmylou Harris, “Love Don’t Care” (1979), one with Jim & Jesse and one with Roy Acuff. Through the 1970s and 1980s he was best known as a fixture of the weekly Opry broadcasts.

Bluegrass musicians kept close to him. Jim & Jesse, who had recorded an album of Louvin Brothers songs in 1969, made the album Jim and Jesse and Charlie with him for Soundwaves in 1982, with Vic Jordan on banjo and Blaine Sprouse and Johnny Gimble on fiddles, and recorded a live set with him at the Harmony House in Nashville that December. Charles Whitstein of the Whitstein Brothers, who had built their first album on Louvin songs, sang Ira’s part with him on a Copper Creek album of the brothers’ songs and, from 1992, on a Louvin Brothers Music Celebration tour that went to Europe several times. In May 1993 he recorded Bluegrass Style (Niptune) in Warren, Michigan, with Pete Goble, Dana Cupp on banjo and Bobby Hicks on fiddle. The Longest Train (Watermelon, 1996) had Barry and Holly Tashian, Jim Lauderdale, Rosie Flores and Katy Moffatt as guests.

A late revival began with Charlie Louvin (Tompkins Square, 2007), recorded in Nashville in June 2006 with Mark Nevers producing and Marty Stuart among the players; it paired him with George Jones, Elvis Costello, Tom T. Hall, Bobby Bare, Jeff Tweedy, Will Oldham and others on Louvin Brothers songs and older country numbers, added a new song, “Ira,” and was nominated for a Grammy; he had already been playing to rock audiences since 2003, when he opened for Cake on its Unlimited Sunshine tour. More records for Tompkins Square followed: the gospel album Steps to Heaven (September 2008), Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs (2008), and the live Hickory Wind, recorded at Waycross, Georgia, in 2009. The Battle Rages On (True North, 2010), an album of war songs, had Del McCoury and Jamie Dailey as guests. His last television appearance, on The Marty Stuart Show, was taped in December 2010.

Charlie Louvin died on 26 January 2011 at his home in Wartrace, Tennessee, at the age of 83. His memoir, Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers, written with Benjamin Whitmer, was published by It Books/HarperCollins in January 2012.

• 1979 – Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (the Louvin Brothers)
• 1991 – Alabama Music Hall of Fame (the Louvin Brothers)
• 1992 – IBMA Certificate of Merit (the Louvin Brothers)
• 2001 – Country Music Hall of Fame (the Louvin Brothers)