On September 10, 2010, Charlie Louvin returns to live performance after surgery to treat pancreatic cancer. Louvin's performance during the Americana Music Association conference will welcome two very special guests to the stage. Emmylou Harris will perform "If I Could Only Win Your Love", a song written by The Louvin Brothers. Legendary steel guitar and dobro player Al Perkins will be lending his talents to the Louvin Brothers song "The Christian Life" and the Gram Parsons song "Hickory Wind." Perkins' career has seen him with both Gram Parsons & the Rolling Stones.
Louvin is set to perform at 10 p.m. (central) at The Rutledge - 410 4th Avenue South, Nashville.
Tompkins Square label has just released Hickory Wind : Live at the Gram Parsons Guitar Pull - Waycross GA, hailed by many media outlets including Influential website Swampland, who said the album "serves as a majestic recording where the soul of man never dies."
On February 22, 1956, The Louvin Brothers warmed up for Elvis Presley at City Auditorium in Waycross, GA. On hand was a nine year old boy named Gram Parsons. It would leave an indelible mark on the future legend, who went on to popularize several Louvin Brothers songs for the ages. On September 19, 2009, Charlie Louvin returned to Waycross to pay tribute to the granddaddy of "Alt Country"/"Americana", singing "Hickory Wind" for the first time ever, as well as Louvin Brothers songs Gram either recorded or must have heard in his early years.
Charlie's emotional return to Waycross was an artist truly going full circle. Having inspired a young Gram Parsons, who later turned a new generation of musicians and fans on to the music of the Louvin Brothers, Charlie walked around the peeling, corroded interior of Waycross' City Auditorium like a ghost. Except Charlie was still here, very much in the flesh.
In fact, the past few years have marked an extraordinary late career run for Charlie, who turned 83 on July 7, 2010. His Grammy-nominated, self-titled Tompkins Square debut album brought him firmly back onto the scene, featuring an array of admirers like Jeff Tweedy, George Jones and Marty Stuart. He fulfilled a long-time desire to record with a gospel choir, the great McCrary Sisters, on 2008's Grammy-nominated Steps To Heaven. Three months later he released the "hellish" side, the critically adored Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs. Charlie has recently played major festivals such as Bonnaroo and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and toured and recorded with Lucinda Williams. The music of the Louvin Brothers continues to resonate, most recently via the inclusion of "My Baby's Gone" on the soundtrack for the hit movie, Crazy Heart. Hickory Wind: Live at the Gram Parsons Guitar Pull, Waycross GA is a fond tip of the hat from one legend to another. If Gram is the granddaddy of "Americana", Charlie is the great-granddaddy; a Country Music Hall of Famer, and a legend in the truest sense of the word.
No comments:
Post a Comment