Charlie Louvin

At 81, the legendary county music musician is still singing tragic songs and gospel great

Charlie Louvin is as legendary as they come. Alongside his brother Ira, he recorded a number of classic country-gospel albums in the 1950s and early-’60s. Ira and Charlie Loudermilk, born in Alabama in 1924 and 1927, respectively, began performing as a duo in Chattanooga before moving to Knoxville for a stint in the late-’40s, where they achieved fame on local radio stations WNOX and WROL as the Louvin Brothers before moving on to Memphis. Their classic album, Tragic Songs of Life (1956), is a wildly influential collection of songs of murder and tragedy, including the ballad for which they’re perhaps most well-known, “Knoxville Girl.” The duo broke up in 1963, and Ira released one solo album before he was killed in a car accident in 1965. Charlie pursued a solo career, releasing a steady stream of albums from 1964 to 1974. Louvin recorded only two albums in the next 33 years, the last one in 1997. In 2007 the small New York-based Tompkins Square label released a self-titled album featuring Charlie singing duets of classic country songs with George Jones, Tom T. Hall and Bobby Bare, as well as a newer generation of country-influenced singers such as Jeff Tweedy, Tift Merritt and Will Oldham. Guest artist extraordinaire Elvis Costello also answered the call to duet with Louvin. The album was nominated for a Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy, and Louvin has since recorded two more albums for Tompkins Square, the recently released gospel collection Steps To Heaven and the upcoming self-explanatory Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Tragic Songs.

We spoke with Louvin recently via phone from his home in Manchester, Tenn., in advance of his show with the Old 97s at the Bijou Oct. 2.

KV: Before your 2007 release, it had been more than 10 years since you recorded an album. Why the long break?

CL: I just got tired of playing the game. At my age, you couldn’t shoot your way into a major label, and I couldn’t afford to send out 3,000 CDs, which I’d have to do if I was on an indie label. These disc jockeys are bought and sold by the major labels. I was sitting at home one morning and Josh Rosenthal [of Tompkins Square Records] called me from New York City and said he was a fan and wanted to make a record with me. So I looked at it and he seemed to have good distribution. If I can buy my record at Wally World, that’s pretty good distribution.

KV: You obviously knew George Jones, but were you familiar with many of the younger artists you recorded with on that album?

CL: No, to tell you the honest truth. But they were all good guys and good gals, and I’ve gotten to be pretty good friends with Elvis Costello. And that boy from Louisville [Will Oldham], I got to be friends with him. And that girl [Tift Merritt] was on the Opry with me and we sang “Grave on the Green Hillside” together, which we did on the album. I’ve got two albums coming out now, one is a gospel record and the other is a collection of murder ballads. Well, they’re not all murder ballads, some of them are just songs about tragic events. On the gospel record we had the McCrary Sisters sing, and this guy play the piano and they were all of ’em very much on their job.

KV: Were you familiar with the McCrary Sisters before that?

CL: I was familiar that they’d recorded with all the big artists. They recorded with a pianist from overseas — you probably know who I’m talking about, he’s a gay boy.

KV: Elton John?

CL: Yeah, Elton John. We recorded songs that used to be sung in church that they don’t sing no more. Nowadays they just do songs with three words, praise songs. It don’t feel like church anymore. That album’s called Steps to Heaven, and I told [Rosenthal] he was a coward if he didn’t call the other one Steps to Hell, but he didn’t want to use the word “hell” in the title. I sing “Mary of the Wild Moor” on it, which is the most tragic song I know.