Charlie Louvin Doubles Up on Releases

 

Sept. 16, 2008 — Country Music Hall of Famer Charlie Louvin streets a new album this week, but before the year is out, he’ll bring another CD to market with a polar-opposite viewpoint.

Charlie, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame as one-half of the Louvin Brothers, infused this week’s release, Steps To Heaven, with 10 traditional gospel songs, including a pair that were first recorded by Charlie and brother Ira.

Though the Louvins built their sound on mountain music and Southern-flavored gospel, Steps To Heaven found Charlie recording with musicians steeped in black-gospel sounds, making Steps an unusual release.

"I did things on the gospel record I had no idea I could do," Charlie, 81, says. "I'd be thinking along the way, ‘How can I do things I've never done before?’ And I did it."

In contrast to that gospel theme, he’ll issue Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs on Dec. 9. The Louvins actually recorded a similarly dark album, Tragic Songs Of Life, in 1956. In addition, their gruesome 1959 single "Knoxville Girl" — in which a man beats a woman to death and dumps her in the river — was hailed as one of country music’s "500 greatest singles" in the 2003 book Heartaches By The Number, published by Vanderbilt University Press in conjunction with the Country Music Foundation.