Listening to Charlie Louvin's new album of old songs is like hearing your grandfather sing hymns. The 80-year-old country music veteran has the warm and easy authority of someone who has spent his entire life with these songs; he knows every word, every melody, every implication by heart. His voice, hardened by experience, sounds worn and weary, especially compared to his popular material of 50 years ago. Most of all it sounds lonely, as if it were created by God specifically to harmonize with his brother Ira Louvin, who died in 1965.
In a perfect world, Charlie Louvin would need no introduction, but while his acolytes are well-known (his songs have been covered by Johnny Cash, Alison Krauss, Gram Parsons-era Byrds, and Uncle Tupelo, to name just a few), the Louvin Brothers themselves are perhaps most famous to a mainstream audience for the silly cover of their 1960 album Satan Is Real. Born Ira and Charles Loudermilk in rural Alabama, the brothers began singing together professionally in the early 1940s. After a decade of paying their dues, they signed with Capitol Records, lodged an impressive number of hits in the country top ten, and became regulars at the Grand Ole Opry. Their story is as epic and indelibly American as Johnny Cash's, full of tragedy and redemption. The brothers were as different from one another as could be: While Charlie remained reserved and devoted to the Christian life they sang about, Ira is well documented as being an alcoholic with a raging temper and a womanizer with four wives. Charlie split the group in 1963; Ira was finally getting his life back together when he was killed by a drunk driver.
Although he's been playing shows for decades, Charlie Louvin is, surprisingly, his first real solo album. It's mostly full of old songs like "Great Atomic Power", the murder ballad "Knoxville Girl", "When I Stop Dreaming", and the Carter Family's "Kneeling Drunkard's Plea", re-recorded in his aged voice and with a roster of admirers-- young artists like Jeff Tweedy, Will Oldham, and Clem Snide's Eef Barzelay, as well as older guard like Tom T. Hall, George Jones, Bobby Bare Sr., Marty Stuart, and Chip Young, who played guitar for Elvis. Most of these tracks stick to a midtempo pace to accommodate Louvin's vocals, but "Kneeling Drunkard's Plea" nicely slows down to sound like a hymn, with a congregation of backing voices lending the chorus a subtle solemnity. And uptempo numbers like "Worried Man Blues" and closer "My Long Journey Home" sound like front-porch jams that give the musicians a chance to show off their picking skills.
The newbies don't come across very well on Charlie Louvin. Both Barzalay and Oldham get less than a verse, ostensibly enough to get their names on the bill, but not enough to make their marks on the songs. Sounding like a city slicker, Elvis Costello brings his usual oily polish to his verse, and on the otherwise tender "Grave on the Green Hillside" Joy Lynn White belts out her lines aggressively, overpowering the gentler performances of Louvin and Tift Merritt. It's the old timers who really shine on Charlie Louvin. George Jones sings well with Louvin on opener "Must You Throw Dirt in My Face" and "Waiting for a Train", and Bare and Hall have a blast on "Blues Stay Away from Me".
But this is Louvin's show, and he doesn't need anyone's assistance selling these songs. There is real character in his voice and an instinctive grace in his phrasing. For that reason, the album's best moment is the sole new song, "Ira". A simple song that sweetly expresses Charlie's enormous loss, it's a poignant tribute not simply to Ira but to Ira's high tenor, which Charlie professes to hear in his head whenever he sings the old songs. "Ira, I still hear you, your sweet harmony off in the distance," Charlie sings, steadfast in his conviction that they'll harmonize again in heaven.
Despite the history behind these songs, Charlie Louvin never exploits his age or legend for the kind of cheap gravitas that Johnny Cash's American Recordings series occasionally lapsed into. Credit goes to Louvin as well as to producer Mark Nevers of Lambchop, who corrals all the musicians and keeps things upbeat and airy. Occasionally, his production sounds a little gimmicky-- the guitar feedback on "Great Atomic Power", the ghostly mandolin on "Ira"-- but his best decision here is to end not with a solemn number, but with Bill Monroe's quick-stepping "My Long Journey Home". A duet with Paul Burch, the song rambles amiably, showcasing Chris Scruggs' banjo picking and Louvin's earthy musicality. Title aside, the song isn't commemorative, but celebratory as it closes the album on a high note.
