Charlie Louvin

The Louvin Brothers were pigeonholed as a gospel act, even when they signed with Capitol in 1952. But they knew they had to break into the secular country charts if they were ever to make a full-time living at music. All they needed was the right song.

“On most of the songs, my brother needed an idea to write about,” Charlie recalls, “so I furnished a great number of the titles. If you gave him a song title, he could write you a song in five minutes. I listened to people talk and to the radio and TV; when someone said something that gave me an idea for a song, I’d write it down and later give it to Ira. One day I got an idea from Ira himself when he was talking about his latest broken love affair.

“I’ve been married to the same woman for 57 years, and if I can’t get along with her, I can’t get along with anyone, because there’s none better. But my brother didn’t have very good luck with women; he had four different wives.” Charlie doesn’t mention that, in 1961, Ira’s third wife shot him three times after he tried to strangle her with a phone cord in a drunken argument. “One day Ira said, ‘I’ve always dreamed of having a happy life.’ He never did have a happy life, but I thought, ‘When you stop dreaming, you don’t have any reason to get up in the morning.’ That was how the song ‘When I Stop Dreaming’ was born.”

When The Louvin Brothers recorded the song in 1955, it burst into the country Top 10 and secured them an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry, an honor they’d been craving for years. They were soon on the road as part of a package tour assembled by Colonel Tom Parker: The Louvin Brothers, The Carter Sisters with Mother Maybelle and a new act by the name of Elvis Presley. The Louvins were the favorite country group of Elvis’ mother, and he would always stand in the wings and watch Charlie and Ira sing. Until, that is, the hot-tempered Ira, angry that this young kid was getting all the attention from the crowds, picked a fight with Elvis backstage one night.

Tom T. Hall—who joins Bobby Bare Sr. and Charlie Louvin on the new album for a version of The Delmore Brothers’ “Blues Stay Away from Me”—saw The Louvin Brothers’ live show several times in the ’50s. Hall was a young disc jockey in Kentucky in those days before he became a successful Nashville songwriter and singer, and he thought the Louvins were the “biggest brother thing” of all time. Their show wasn’t just about sweet singing, he says; there was also some shaking, rattling and rolling going on.

“I have heard people say that Ira Louvin was the first Elvis,” Hall says. “He didn’t just stand there on stage; he moved around a lot and the women liked it. [And the Louvins] did something else very unusual: They would trade parts at different parts in the song. Charlie would go from the low part to the high, and Ira would go from the high to the low. It gave their music a very unique sound.”

The lifelong closeness that makes brother acts sound so good is the same thing that makes them squabble and break up. You know each other’s voices so well that you can blend beautifully, but you also know each other’s annoying habits so well that you want to kill each other. Just think of all the successful rock ’n’ roll bands famous for feuding siblings: The Everly Brothers, The Kinks, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Blasters, Oasis, The Black Crowes.

“It’s something that happens between brothers,” Charlie philosophizes. “One brother doesn’t want the other brother telling him what to do. Ira and I worked up what I thought was the solution: I’d take care of the business, and he’d take care of the music. But even that didn’t work. We’d be on stage and he’d ask me under his breath, ‘What do you want to sing next?’ I’d give him a title, because I always had a title ready, and he’d turn around and say, ‘Why do you want to sing that damn thing?’

“Mostly, though, it was the drinking. I was a non-drinker, and Ira was a big-time drinker. Any time that you feel that you have to have a drink to do your job, you’re fixing to destroy your job. It was a problem everywhere. One of the Delmores was a drinker; one of the Stanleys was a drinker; one of the Wilburns was a drinker. It just goes on and on.”

The tension eventually began to take its toll. The duo had its sixth and final Top 10 single in 1958, and its 12th and final Top 40 hit in 1962. Ira began showing up for gigs drunker than a skunk, but when word got back to Nashville, it was always that “The Louvin Brothers were drunk,” tarring the innocent Charlie with Ira’s sins. The final breaking point was the travel arrangement.

“I won’t ride in a car driven by a man who’s been drinking,” Charlie explains, “and Ira knew that. He made sure he had an ample supply of [drink] when we finished a job or got ready to go anywhere, so I’d end up driving all night. He’d sit there next to me and say, ‘As soon as I get off this blankety-blank trip, I’m going to quit this business. I don’t know what you’ll do, probably work in a service station.’ I heard that put-down plenty of times. “After an especially bad night in Kansas City, it took some doing to get him out of bed so we could leave for Watseka. On the way to Illinois, he must have said a dozen times, ‘You’ve heard me say this before, but I’m quitting this rotten business.’ So I said, ‘You’ve never heard me say this before, but you’re right. This is the last date we’ll work together.’ And it was.”

It was 1963, and Charlie laid the groundwork for a solo career. He patched things up with the Opry, which had banned Ira from the backstage. He got the Capitol contract changed from a Louvin Brothers deal to two solo deals, and he took his wife and his parents on a vacation to Florida.

“When we got back,” he continues, “Ira called me and said, ‘What time are we on the Opry tonight?’ I said, ‘What do you mean, “we?” I’ll be on the Opry tonight by myself. I told you we were finished.’ He said, ‘Ah, you know that was just the old whiskey talking.’ And I said, ‘Every time you speak it’s the whiskey talking.’”

Charlie’s solo career was an immediate success. The single, “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” went to #4 in 1964, and he had 16 Top 40 country hits between then and 1974. His warm baritone was still immensely appealing, but it wasn’t the same without the high harmony that he could only hear in his head. Ira, meanwhile, recorded several solo singles for Capitol, but they weren’t hits. And before he could go back into the studio again, he was struck down by that drunk driver.