I remember when I first heard The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn singing ‘The Christian Life’ on the hugely influential album ‘Sweetheart Of The Rodeo’. It was a forthright, aching evocation of religious innocence that immediately gripped me. Was this an ironic sideswipe or a beautifully tempered moment of blessed reality? I was struck by the song’s simplicity and wanted to hear more.
My search led me to The Louvin Brothers’ album ‘Satan Is Real’ with its surreal cover and Bible belt sensibilities. It was gripping stuff. Out there. And further investigation unlocked a whole bathtub of suitably maudlin music, all of which seemed to hail from the Appalachian hills or the back porches of the deep south. The likes of The Carter Family, The Delmore Brothers, Hank Snow, Wade Mainer, The Maddox Brothers And Sister Rose, Milton Estes, The Trace Family Trio, The Swanee River Boys and many more were teetering on the edge of disasters that would or could happen with God’s help or not.
‘Satan Is Real’ was a stunning epic that Gram Parsons and McGuinn had turned me onto, but it was the album ‘Tragic Songs Of Life’ from 1956, the year of my birth, that was their calling card, brimming with sadness, pathos and beauty. A step further into the wilderness and an inspiration for Nick Cave along the way, who covered ‘Knoxville Girl’ as the flipside to his cover of the standard ‘Henry Lee’.
Of course, Cave’s choice of music to inspire or cover is faultless, his fickle finger has pointed out everything from John Lee Hooker, Odetta, Leonard Cohen, Lefty Frizzell, Blind Willie Johnson and Johnny Cash along the way and The Louvin Brothers and their ‘Tragic Songs Of Life’ fits perfectly in such company.
‘Tragic Songs Of Life’ is a journey into subconscious paranoia powered by mandolin and guitar, with Paul Yaldell assisting Charlie and Ira Louvin on a second guitar. The mood is melancholy, the glass is half empty. From the opening ’Kentucky’ and its homesick storyline – a song which would later turn up on The Everly Brothers’ ‘Songs Our Daddy Taught Us’ many years later - to the following ‘I’ll Be All Smiles Tonight’ and its tale of a seemingly inevitable impending heartbreak, a classic written by The Carter Family and covered by Kitty Wells among others, this is an album that sets out its stall and passes the Kleenex.
Just two tracks in and the mood is sombre. By track three, the Louvins have given up on love with ‘Let Her Go, God Bless Her, a song also covered by Blind Boy Fuller, which is followed by the realisation that they perhaps should have put up more of a fight on ‘What Is Home Without Love?’ a standard covered by Roy Harvey in the late ‘20s and in the early ‘50s by The Lilly Brothers And Don Stover. The song refers to the lack of love and a baby to complete a “happy” home and the theme is continued on the aching ‘A Tiny Broken Heart’ a southern mountain song that was a staple of The Doc Watson Family, Alice Gerrard And Hazel Dickens and more recently was performed by Alison Krauss And Union Station on their live album.
The original side one closed with the magnificent ‘In The Pines’, a standard that has been performed by generations of artists including Leadbelly and Bill Monroe, ‘60s folk revivalists Jackson C Frank, Joan Baez and Dave Van Ronk, Dolly Parton and more recently Smog. A story of departing trains taking lost loved ones away it lives and dies with the Louvins exquisite harmony lines.
Having opened side one with a yearning for Kentucky, The Louvin Brothers turn their attention to ‘Alabama’ painting a picture of downhome simplicity that beckons its wayward sons home. By contrast, ‘Katie Dear’ is the story of a suicide pact by unrequited lovers who employ silver daggers to kill themselves when Katie’s parents refuse to let them marry, a million miles from the lost safety of the opener.
And the mood darkens further with ‘My Brother’s Will’, which tells of two brothers who were love rivals. On the death of one of the brothers in a hunting accident, the other brother is willed his house and wife, but on returning to the family home he discovers that she has already gone off with another so he cannot fulfil his brother’s will. It’s real soap opera stuff from the early ‘50s.
Similarly ‘Knoxville Girl’, a traditional song based on the old English folk song ‘The Wexford Girl’, tells the story of a man who kills his true love and throws her in the river. He’s eventually caught and goes to jail. Covered by everyone from The Wilburn Brothers to Charlie Feathers, The Lemonheads to Nick Cave, it’s a mysterious storyline, a murder with no real motive, made more eerie by the Louvins’ off kilter harmony.
The penultimate track, ‘Take The News To Mother’ concentrates on a soldier who is dying on the battlefields of France, lamenting that he’ll never see his mother again, while ‘Mary Of The Wild Moor’ tells of a girl returning home who freezes to death at her door because her father cannot hear her knocking.
In total these 12 tracks represent a glorious moment in music, a time when the enjoyment of sadness, the thrill of depression and the tingling of the spine at the misbehaviour of the songs’ characters are simply breathtaking.
The Louvin Brothers followed ‘Tragic Songs Of Life’ with two albums from their God-fearing upbringing, 1957’s ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ and the following year’s ‘The Family Who Prays’ from which the final four tracks are taken. And those albums were superseded with the now legendary ‘Satan Is Real’ capturing the mood of desperation and a feeling of emptiness perfectly.
Dave Henderson, MOJO
The original album 1 Kentucky 2 I’ll Be All Smiles Tonight 3 Let Her Go, God Bless Her 4 What Is Home Without Love 5 A Tiny Broken Heart 6 In The Pines 7 Alabama 8 Katie Dear 9 My Brother’s Will 10 Knoxville Girl 11 Take The News To Mother 12 Mary Of The Wild Moor
Religious overtones 13 Satan Lied To Me 14 Pray For Me 15 Lord, I’m Coming Home 16 Thankful
