Charlie Louvin dies at 83

Back in late July Charlie Louvin had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he was getting ready
for surgery.
Speaking to the Sentinel-Tribune he was optimistic about the surgery and was also already thinking ahead
to the shows he’d play after a short period of recovery.
One of the earliest was to be the closing set at the Black Swamp Arts Festival on Sept. 12.
The surgery didn’t go as well as planned, but he still had the festival on his schedule. Then on the
Sunday he was to perform word arrived that after an appearance elsewhere when he reportedly barely got
through his set, he had to cancel.
Early Wednesday, Louvin succumbed to the cancer at 83.
Louvin came to fame, and entered the Country Music Hall of Fame, as a member of the Louvin Brothers. He
and his brother Ira’s voice weaved around each other in such high, tangled harmony that it was hard to
tell who was singing the melody.
"It was as natural as breathing," Louvin told the Sentinel last summer.
As children they sang in church and a professionals they moved between the sacred and secular sides,
gaining notoriety for the garish cover on the LP "Satan Is Real," which Ira Louvin designed.

He had been performing as a single since his brother died in a car crash in 1965, a couple years after
the duo had disbanded because of troubles caused by Ira’s drinking.
Louvin told Associated Press in 2007 that his brother "was extremely hard to get along with when he
drank, and he drank too often."
"I miss harmony more than anything in the world," Louvin told the Sentinel. "Any song
worth singing you need harmony on it."
Though the brothers’ brand of traditional country and western fell out of favor, Louvin continued and in
recent years started to renewal of interest in their music. "I just wish Ira could have been around
to enjoy it," Louvin said.
Charlie Louvin was born Charles Loudermilk in Henager, Ala., in 1927. He and Ira, born in 1924, worked in
the fields on the family farm and began singing together as teenagers, developing the harmony that would
become their trademark.
"I can remember my brother and I singing together when I was five and he was eight years old,"
Louvin told The Associated Press. "He already knew how, and he was teaching me."
They worked on radio stations in Knoxville, Tenn., and Memphis, Tenn., in the 1940s, and signed their
first record deal with Apollo in 1947.
Among their hits were "I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby," which was No. 1 in 1965; "When
I Stop Dreaming"; "Hoping That You’re Hoping"; and "You’re Running Wild."
They influenced vocal harmony acts from the Everly Brothers onward including Gram Parsons, whose work
with The Byrds spawned country rock.
To the end Louvin remained a traditionalist lamenting the infusion of electric guitars and drums that are
louder than the singer.
His formula for good country was simple: "Songs should have a message and a story and a
melody."
(Associated Press writer Kristin M. Hall contributed to this story.)