The Louvin Brothers

This site was built and is maintained by me, Kathy Louvin, and my son Billy, in tribute to my daddy, Ira, and my uncle Charlie, The Louvin Brothers. In this BIO, I will share some factual info about their career and incredible musical legacy, but mostly I will share feelings and memories, both good and bad, of two of the most important people in my life. High atop Sand Mountain, in a little drive by called Henegar in Alabama, came two little boys that would grow up to make a mark on the music world that would never be equaled nor forgotten. Born to a farmer of German descent, Colonel Moreno Loudermilk (Papa), and the daughter of a Baptist preacher, Georgianne Elizabeth Wootten (Grandma), Daddy and Uncle Charlie started their extraordinary lives behind a plow and the backside of a mule. Their early influences were The Blue Sky Boys, The Delmore Brothers, and the Shape Note singing tradition Grandma's side of the family had carried on in the Appalachians since the 1800's. Papa played banjo, clawhammer style, and Grandma sang like an angel. Sometimes, I can close my eyes and hear her singing some of the old acapela ballads like "The Knoxville Girl" or Mary Of The Wild Moor" as her tiny frame flurries around the spacious kitchen in the old farmhouse. There was no indoor plumbing, and when Papa built the house, he made it so the well was situated right inside the kitchen. In the evening time, we'd draw our baths by dropping a big cylinder like container down to the water, listen until it stopped gurgling, then bring it back up and empty some in pots for heating and the rest in a huge galvaized tub right in front of the wood stove. There were always two or more of us grandkids there, and my time spent there as a child was the best of my life. She made the most delicious fried okra on the planet and her specialty was Uncle Charlie's favorite, Peppermint Candy Cake. She ground her own meal and flour and churned her own butter, loved her family and lived for the Lord.



Daddy and Uncle Charlie's first professional gig was on July 4, 1940 about ten miles from their home, in the little town of Flat Rock, Al, in the middle of a "Flying Jenny", nowadays known as a Merry-Go-Round. They were 16 and 13 years old. Daddy was the oldest. They stood in the center of the homemade contraption pulled by mules, and sang all day long, with few breaks, for the grand sum of three dollars each. They were pretty impressed! It sounds unbelievable, but it was more than Papa could make for a whole day of toil in the fields on their 27 acre farm.

A short time later, they saw their first stage show. A performance by Roy Acuff at the local high school. They gave in to their dreams and their destiny and never looked back. I could write alot about the when whats and wheres, highs and lows, and setbacks and peaks of their long and eventful career, but most all that can be found with a Google search. This is a story about two brothers who were born with all the odds against them. These brothers came from a poor farming family in an unforgiving part of the Appalachia that spawned either preachers or moonshiners, and our family had both. I read somewhere that Sand Mountain has more churches per square mile than any other place in the northern hemisphere. It also has more murders. They knew, loved and depended on each other in a way that can hardly be described. They were the only two boys of seven children. Ha! Think about that. Some say they had kind of a 'love/hate' relationship. I would guess that's fairly common with siblings, especially when they're so close in every other way. I've heard identical twins describe the connection only they can understand. It was like that with them. They could read each other like a book. The goodness of their personal and professional life was often overshadowed by their shortcomings and weaknesses. Daddy suffered from the disease of alcoholism. Anyone who has ever been touched by that in any way knows what typically goes along with that. He was a passionate, sentimental, emotional, brilliant, tormented man. Grandma always swore he was 'under conviction'. That meant he had been called to preach the gospel and had not followed the calling. He and my mother fought like cats and dogs. There were beatings, shootings, and abuse of every form in my home growing up, the likes of which I would never repeat to even my adult children. Daddy and Mother divorced when I was six. They probably saved each other's lives by doing that. So then, after a lifetime, a very short one, of drinking, popping pills (speed in those days) , raging, voilent behavoir, womanizing, and unsucessfully swearing off the bottle a million times, he got sober. And he stayed sober until he was killed by a drunk driver in June of 1965. Even though the duo had broken up a little less than two years before, they remained close and had just started their own music publishing company. Uncle Charlie had helped him build a log house on the mountain where he wanted to retire with his new wife and start a little business designing musical instruments. Sometimes life (or death) sure can get in the way of our plans. Uncle Charlie had his own demons too, I suppose. We've actually never been very close but I love and respect him always. One time I asked a former band member of theirs if Daddy was really the monster everybody made him out to be. And he emphatically said, "No! Charlie was the monster." I spent a short amount of time with Uncle Charlie back in the mid-70's, after my mother had passed, and he was fairly strung out on speed himself back then. But, of course, so was I. He and my Aunt Betty survived alot that could've destroyed them, but they perservered and drew strength from the foundation they had built together. They are still together today. In fact, he recently released a new CD and it is getting really good press and seems to be doing well. I think that's a testimony to the determination of his spirit and the importance of the legacy they built together. Nobody is perfect, thank God, and every family has things in their past they wish they could wipe out.

But from two little boys who started out under a big old iron frame bed, singing back to back to hide their shyness, to having their memorials reside in the Country Music Hall of Fame, I think that's a perfect American success story.