![]() When you look at the album cover of Satan is Real, it’s an image that’s impossible to ignore. There are much to say about their career, and we will in later posts, but today we are going to talk about and listen to the masterpiece, Satan is Real. Whether or not he meant to, I’d say that’s one of the greatest gifts Papa gave us.” – Charlie Louvin Their mother taught them religious songs, and their father beat them so much, that the brothers used their singing to get away from the life on the cotton form. But the other part is that we were brothers.” Part of the reason we could do that was that we’d learned to have a good ear for other people’s voices when we sang Sacred Harp. “We could change in the middle of a word. “It baffled a lot of people,” Charlie Louvin explains in his fantastic memoir. I could not find any live footage from Satan is real, but this clip of them singing, I don’t belive you’ve met my baby is a fine showcase for their intricate singing style: This was more than close-harmony singing each instance was an act of transubstantiation. But every so often, in the middle of a song, some hidden signal flashed and we switched places - with Ira swooping down from the heights, and me angling upward - and even the most careful listeners would lose track of which man was carrying the lead. I(Charlie) strummed a guitar, grinned like a vaudevillian and handled the bottom register. Ira was a full head taller than me, he played the mandolin like Bill Monroe and sang in an impossibly high, tense, quivering tenor. …people who saw the Louvin Brothers perform were mystified by the experience. In The recently published book, Satan is Real, the ballad of the Louvin Brothers, Charlie talks about their singing style.This is not a straight quote, but it goes something like this: ![]() Charlie Louvin died two years ago at 83 just a few months after publishing his story about The Louvin brothers. The gospel/country duo Charlie and Ira Louvin was born and grew up in the Sand Mountain region of Alabama, they lived on a cotton farm south of the Appalachian Mountains, that’s where they developed their distinct harmony style in the deep Sacred Harp tradition of the Baptist church. Satan Is Real is a gospel album by American country music duo The Louvin Brothers. Why is it so important in the americana /country/gospel music canon? ![]()
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