Charlie Louvin

KV: That’s on the Louvin Brothers’ Tragic Side of Life, isn't it?

CL: Yeah, I sing three songs off the first Louvin Brothers album, “Katy Dear,” “My Brother’s Will” and “Mary of the Wild Moor.”

KV: Do you play “Knoxville Girl” every show? I guess you’ll have to play it here.

CL: Just about every show. That song’s 300 years old. It was written in England, so long ago that nobody knows who wrote it. If you put a song like that on your album you just took a credit for arranging. We played Grimey’s [record store in Nashville] the other night, and Billy Bob Thornton was there. He sings “Knoxville Girl” on his new album, so he got up and sang it with me.

KV: What kind of band do you tour with?

CL: A four piece. My son plays flat-top guitar, and we have an electric guitar, electric bass and a drummer.

KV: Do you play anything?

CL: No, I had two fingers shortened on my left hand about four years ago, so I’m pretty limited, I don’t play anymore. But I was able to play for a long time, so I’m not complaining.
 
KV: You have a live record recorded in a record store, and seem to play a lot of shows in record stores. Do you enjoy those kinds of venues?

CL: I enjoy pickin’ and singin’ I don’t care where it is. But I don’t like to overdo anything, and I think Josh kinda overdoes it. About five out of every 10 shows we’re asked to come early to play a record store or somewhere.

KV: Did you come from a very musical family?

CL: No, not really. My father played a five-string, and he’d come in and pick his banjo after working in the fields for 12 or 14 hours. My mother was a tremendous Sacred Harp scholar. In fact, “Love at Home” from the new album is a Sacred Harp song.

KV: You lived in Knoxville in the 1940s, what was the local country music scene like then?

CL: We played the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round on WNOX , and we played WROL. One day Ira got mad and smashed his mandolin — it was out of tune I think — and Lowell Blanchard [of WNOX] said, “If this happens again, you won’t have to talk to me. Just walk out the door and don’t come back.” But you had Chet Atkins there, Carl Smith, Red Rector — I think Roy Acuff may have already left. It seemed to be you had to come through Knoxville and the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round to become an Opry member. If you were extra good Lowell would recommend you, or he might tell somebody, “You don’t want this group.”

KV: Where else did you play besides radio stations? Any nightclubs?

CL: No, there weren’t any nightclubs. There were a lot of places you could play, mostly schoolhouses. If you were talking during the music there’d be a big guy to come over and ask you to be quiet, and if you kept on talking, a group of guys would come over and take you outside and they weren’t asking anymore. There was a place in downtown Morristown called Junior Oak’s Order Hall, where everybody played. No telling how many times we worked it. Do you know who Cas Walker is? Cas saved many a hillbilly’s life. He actually paid them, WNOX didn’t. Playing there was good for getting your name out, but you didn’t make any money. Do you all have the Tennessee Theatre there?

KV: Yeah.

CL: Well I don’t know if you remember this, but I had the esteem pleasure of playing Chet Atkins’ Homecoming at the Tennessee Theatre [in 1998]. We opened the show for him. Chet had a stroke and couldn’t play good. I hate to see anybody get in that shape, but it hurts to see a musician of Chet Atkins’ caliber get like that. But he came out and was able to play some, and he was smiling big at everybody. It was his last show.