In 1956, the Louvin Brothers released their first long-playing album on Capitol, Tragic Songs Of Life. The collection of murder ballads and songs of lost love would become their best-selling album and an influential aesthetic document of country tragedy. The Louvin Brothers always sang of so much more than doom and despair, but no country group ever found more beauty in the themes.
More than half a century later, Charlie Louvin, at age 81, revisits the scene of those crimes with Sings Murder Ballads And Disaster Songs, his fourth release for the Tompkins Square label and another chapter in his remarkable collaboration with producer Mark Nevers of the Nashville indie-rock collective Lambchop. Louvin knows these songs like few singers alive, having grown up when many of them were still topical, when they moved through the air like headline news. His voice may be, in his words, “tore down,” but out of the cracks and crevices of his phrasing, the emotional truth of the stories rises up, buoyed by the surprisingly swinging rhythmic arrangements of flat-top guitar, snare, bass and fiddle. In the hands of Louvin and Nevers, these timeless death songs sound present, full of musical life.
In the last few years, your career has had quite a revival. Do you wish your life were a little quieter?
There are times when it gets quiet, and then I do something to make it busy again. I’m not a sitter or a squatter. I come in off the road after a few weeks and I enjoy a few days at home with the quiet, but then it’s time to get out and do something again. It’s definitely a fever. It gets in the blood and you can’t get rid of it.
You’re on the road constantly.
We’ve done a hundred dates this year. We’re hoping 2009 will be that good or better. We’ve gotten on some of the largest shows in the world. Bonnaroo, the one in Palm Springs [Stagecoach], Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco, and some festivals up in Canada.
Who had the idea for a murder ballad collection?
It was half Josh [Rosenthal, Tompkins Square label founder], and half mine. Josh had this three-CD set out [People Take Warning! Murder Ballads And Disaster Songs], and he had some primitive versions of the songs, the original recorded versions. And he thought we’d do them a little differently. Of course the most successful album my brother and I had was Tragic Songs Of Life. I don’t know why people like murder songs. When I go, and I’ve been there a lot of times, to a prison to do a free show, they request junk like “Knoxville Girl”. The very thing that put them in prison is what they want to hear! You’d think they’d want to hear “You Are My Sunshine”, but they don’t.
It’s cathartic.
I don’t know. You know that old adage, misery loves company? When you sing these songs, they can punch their buddies and say, “He’s singing about my life!”
But you and I, we haven’t lived those stories. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of, but the songs still matter to us.
That’s true, but you don’t have to shoot a man to kill him. You can kill him with words. A pistol is quicker, but if you say the wrong things to a friend you can destroy his life. And if you do that, you might as well murder him.
So you were part of the idea for the album.
My brother got killed in a wreck on Father’s Day in 1965 in Missouri. According to Missouri law, the people driving the other car were nine times drunk. I’m not on a campaign on the subject, but I’m one of the biggest haters of people who drink and get behind the steering wheel. Maybe when they catch them, they should charge them with attempted murder. That car can wipe out a whole family in a few seconds. On this album, there’s one of the most prolific songs about that subject. A Roy Acuff 1941 song, “Wreck On The Highway”. It’s very graphic. I’ve had people call and say, that’s exactly how my mother, father, brother, sister got killed. If you could have shot a video of my brother, the song would have perfectly captured that. It killed four people including him and the other people in the car. In a split second, six people were gone.
(Roy Acuff’s original version of “Wreck On The Highway”)
Is it safe to say you’ve been singing about death all your life?
I think so. We’ve done some songs like “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby”, and it went #1, but when my brother and I would go out and do some shows, we’d always get ten times as many requests for “Knoxville Girl”. I’m not supposed to know why. If they like it, I enjoy singing them. I’d never poke fun at other people’s misery. We all have something in the closet we don’t want to talk about.
In old-time country music, death, especially violent death, has a special place. There might be death in rock or rhythm & blues, but it has a unique place in country music.
There are some songs on this album I never dreamed I’d record. I heard most of these songs all my life, like “Wreck Of The Old 97″ and the one Josh renamed as the “Little Grave In Georgia”.
I didn’t know that song.
No wonder. He picked the wrong title! That song was very popular when I was a boy. I was born in 1927 and this song, this murder, happened in 1925. It was a little 14-year-old girl who worked in a pencil factory, and she went to pick up her pay on a Friday morning. There wasn’t anybody there but the janitor. He raped and killed her. They caught him. He’d taken her out to an oak tree to do his dastardly thing. When they proved him guilty they marched him from the courthouse to the oak tree, and that’s where they hanged him. Justice was certain and quick then.
[Editor's note: According to Wikipedia, the murder happened in 1913, and other details of the crime differ somewhat from Charlie's recollection.]
What was the original name of that song?
“Little Mary Phagan”. It was one of the most popular songs. When I was 6 years old we were singing it. My mother taught it to us. Of course, you didn’t hear much of that on the radio. It wasn’t licensed to be on the radio. She heard it by word of mouth and a few people recorded it.
version by Fiddlin’ John Carson and Rosa Lee Carson
You worked up the arrangements for most of these songs.
I had the melodies. When we recorded, we had a flat-top guitar player, one of the best, Ben Hall. And we had a bass player and a guy on a snare drum and that was it. And then (Mark Nevers) added all the other instruments later. I didn’t know that until I got the final mix on it. This Ben Hall guy, 18 years old, he plays more guitar than any man I’ve met. He’s a big fan of the old-time music. He just knew ‘em. Somewhere down the line they decided they needed more music on it, adding fiddle here and steel guitar. I guess that didn’t hurt it.
The sound of the record is very lively, even bouncy.
That’s very true. “Darling Corey” and “Wreck Of The Old 97″ have a bright tempo.
You can almost dance to it.
Yeah! “Katy Dear” too, which is from the Tragic Songs Of Life album, which I thought was worth cutting again. And “Mary Of The Wild Moor”. That will always be the most tragic song I’ve ever sung. When I was growing up, if a girl went to town and got in trouble, she better not come home without a husband. And this girl did in the song. And her father refused to let her in. Her and the child both froze to death in his front yard. That is tragedy plus. When I toured England I got to see a moor. I had always pictured it as a swampy area where willows grow. When I got to see it, it was a barren hill. Nothing could grow there.
When you sing now, do you focus on certain techniques?
I sing different from a lot of people. Sometimes I’m behind the music. The pickers have to know the song. If they think I’m not going to get out in time, and they slow down, I’ll beat them out. So they need to know the arrangement, and not pay attention to my singing. I’ll get through. I can’t sing as high as I used to. I probably couldn’t if I tried. I’m glad my brother didn’t have to hang around until his voice got tore down, so to speak. There’s tricks to the trade. I know dozens of artists who recorded a song in one key and then in later in life they dropped the key. I don’t do that. My original songs, like “Visit Me On Sunday” or “See the Big Man Cry”, I do them in the original key. We recorded thirteen songs in two two-hour sessions. I only had to go back and overdub my voice on one song. The first run through was it. I knew the melodies and all I needed was the words. When I record, I do it more relaxed. You don’t last as long if you’re right at the top of your scale. If you sing just as high as you can, well, you won’t last as long.
