Charlie Louvin, 1927-2011

Charlie Louvin, the guitar-playing half of the bluegrass-influenced duo the Louvin Brothers, died Wednesday at the age of 83, at his home in Wartrace, Tenn., just west of Manchester. He had a lot of ups and downs in a 65-year career, but his international fame has never faded. Members of the Grand Ole Opry but never pop stars, the duo was sometimes more noted for their influence on other acts, some of them surprising--like Elvis Costello, Gram Parsons, the Byrds, and another duo spawned in Knoxville, the Everly Brothers. Last year, the British newsweekly The Observer quoted Emmylou Harris: "I just could not get enough of that sound. I'd always loved the Everly Brothers, but there was something scary and washed in the blood about the sound of the Louvin Brothers." The New York Times cited that observation again this week. 

After the sudden death of his mandolinist brother, Ira Louvin, in a 1965 car wreck, Charlie worked on his own music. He performed at the Tennessee back in the summer of '98. When I interviewed him for this paper, he was friendly, almost bashful, about his success. 

He talked about his long acquaintence with Knoxville. He grew up on a farm in northern Alabama, but drove all the way to Knoxville's Market Square with their dad to sell sorghum. When they got a chance to perform for Cas Walker's WROL in 1947, they jumped at it, and moved here. They were disappointed with the deal Cas offered, though, and moved on to better-paying WNOX. He admitted their Knoxville years were not among his fondest memories, involving commercial disappointments and difficulties with his brother's erratic and sometimes violent behavior. The Louvin Brothers recorded "Knoxville Girl," a very old murder ballad they'd known even as kids in Alabama, in 1955, several years after leaving Knoxville. 

At the Tennessee, he performed a fine show of old Louvin Brothers tunes, with a new partner to replace Ira, killed in a car wreck in 1965, but he closed without playing the song he made famous, Knoxville Girl, until it was requested. Later, other performers, like Louvin admirer Elvis Costello, have performed the song more voluntarily, on the same stage, inspired by being in the town of its setting. But the man who helped make it famous seemed to play it reluctantly, apologizing first, and explaining the theory that it was really just an old English ballad, with the word Knoxville long since substuted for Oxford, or Wexford, or something. And it wasn't necessarily, he said, a true confession about murdering a girl in Knoxville and throwing her into the river. Then he played it, and of course the song is so extreme and bizarre, grisly in its particulars, it did bring nervous laughter. But he played it because we wanted to hear it, and he was a polite old man who didn't want the audience to go home disappointed. He was probably the nicest legend I've ever talked to. 

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