Satan Is Real: The Ballad Of The Louvin Brothers

I've been on a real Louvin Brothers kick since first hearing about them in a book on Gram Parsons. This book is written by Charlie Louvin, the younger of the two brothers and recounts his sixty-five-year music career. He died not long after the book was released. I reckon you don't really have to know anything about the brothers or be a country music fan to enjoy the book. It is a well-written story about growing up in rural Alabama in a poor sharecropper's family with dreams of escaping to a different world through music. Charlie, and especially his older brother Ira, were regularly bashed senseless by their father who otherwise worked the boys and their older sisters like a slave-driver. All the girls fled the farm by getting married at ridiculously young ages. Charlie and Ira learnt music from their mother, mainly old English and Irish ballads, which had been passed down in her family for generations. A few of these ended up on their first LP, Tragic Songs Of Life, in 1956: 'Knoxville Girl' [originally 'Wexford Girl'] and 'Mary Of The Wild Moor'. The brothers ended up writing many popular songs of their own and became famous for their harmony singing, backed with Ira's mandolin and Charlie's guitar. The tale of their quest to appear at the Grand Ole Opry and get a record deal is well-told. Countless tours through backwater towns and regular appearances on small-town radio shows in ludicrous time-slots like 5.00 am in the morning. They eventually achieved a measure of success, but Ira went off the rails, drinking heavily, abusing fans from the stage and regularly smashing up his mandolin in disgust when it went out of tune. Charlie was left to finish shows off by himself so often he finally decided to go solo. Ira, it seems, just decided to go further downhill, although he apparently had a plan to become a wandering preacher shortly before he and his third wife were killed in a car accident. Lots of other folk appear in the story who are more famous, like Elvis Presley, Colonel Tom Parker and Johnny Cash. Charlie probably upset a lot of the country music establishment with what he says about certain people, and he can be very blunt and sometimes caustic. His choice of words is often crude, but he comes across as a generally polite sort of chap. An old-style southern country gentleman, perhaps? The book cover is taken from one of the brothers' LPs with the same title: Satan Is Real. The photo was taken at a rocky outcrop near Charlie's house. They made the plywood cut-out Satan themselves and the fiery brimstone was created by old car tyres soaked in petrol. The original LP sells for hundreds of dollars today.