Sadly, Charlie Louvin died a year before Satan Is Real, the Louvin Brothers biography he co-wrote with Benjamin Whitmer, was published in 2012. Charlie, though, is very alive within the pages of the book, because Satan Is Real employs a very conversational style to tell the Louvin Brothers story. One can easily imagine that the book was taken from recordings of Charlie just sitting back and telling stories one after the other as he recalled them.
When they were growing up on a small farm in Sand Mountain, Alabama, Charlie and Ira Loudermilk could never have imagined that they would grow up to become world famous as Charlie and Ira Louvin, The Louvin Brothers. But the two immensely talented and driven boys would do exactly that, and in this frank and revealing biography Charlie recounts how it all happened. The boys grew up during The Depression, and they were expected to help their father put food on the table by working long hours in the fields and around the house. They did that, but it did not stop them from discovering a love of music that stayed with the brothers for the rest of their lives.
The tragedy of the Louvin Brothers, of course, is that Ira also discovered that he could cope with neither his out-of-control addiction to alcohol nor with his resentment towards his father about the way he was raised. Charlie had neither of these problems; instead, his problem was that he found it more and more difficult to cope with Ira's destructive habits and behavior. Hauntingly, the brothers were no longer singing as a duo when Ira and several people in his car were killed in a head-on collision in Kansas in 1965.
Along the way, the Louvin Brothers created some of the most beautiful vocal harmonies the world has ever heard while creating songs that are today considered true country music classics. The first songs they learned to sing together at the feet of their mother were those brought with them by some of America's earliest settlers. Like so many who came before and after them, they honed their skills in their small church, one in which everyone was encouraged to express their emotions in song. And then they hit the road, and they sang, even for free, anywhere that anyone would listen to them. It took a long time for the Louvin Brothers to achieve some measure of success and respect, but when that opportunity came, they were certainly ready.
Charlie Louvin uses some rather blunt, a time or two even bordering on lewd, language in Satan Is Real, but I found that this choice only added to the truth of what Louvin reveals about his and Ira's lives. As the back cover puts it, "Satan Is Real is...an epic tale of two brothers bound together by love, hate, alcohol, blood, and music." In my estimation, this is a solid four-star biography.
Aside: This rather unusual book cover is actually a mashup using an a Lovin Brothers gospel music album cover and the elements of a book cover. Below, is that album cover:
I grew up in Alabama but I never heard of the Louvin brothers. I do enjoy country music, but have never been a huge fan, and not when I was younger either. Sounds like an interesting book.
ReplyDeleteThey were primarily gospel music singers, much of their career, but they did impact the country music charts with some songs that became real classics over time. Ira was the songwriter of the two, and he was really good at it. It was a huge shame that he could not stand the least criticism, though, because he would have accomplished a whole lot more if he had just taken in a little input from others.
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