1001 Albums To Hear Before You Die: 4. The Louvin Brothers – Tragic Songs of Life (1956)

Continuing my journey through Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums To Hear Before You Die.

4. The Louvin Brothers – Tragic Songs of Life (1956) 

Elvis and Sinatra are household names. Less so the Louvin Brothers. Everley, Isley, Bellamy, Righteous, Walker, yep. Louvin, not so much. They’re a slice of American Folk, singing close harmony with mandolin and guitar, often with a waltz tempo, and this album does what it says. Lots of murder ballads, lost loves, early deaths, unfaithful sweethearts, often in one song. It’s the kind of thing you might find on the soundtrack of a Coen Brothers or Wes Anderson film. 

I do like a bit of Americana – I have a Spotify playlist called Americana Symphony after all. Perhaps 45 minutes of the same people gets a bit much, but it’s fine with me nonetheless. In My Brother’s Will, the singer promises to take care of his dying brother’s sweetheart, with whom the two were one rivals for her affections. Only to find at the end that she’s gone off to marry somebody else. And here both the instrumentation and the subject reminded me of Planxty’s Good Ship Kangaroo. Katie Dear sees the singer and his lover try to elope, only for the girl’s father to hunt them down, kill the narrator with a golden dagger, which Katie then uses to kill herself. “You’ll love it – everybody dies!” 

I was thinking that there were no tracks on here that were familiar (aside from a general style and tone), until I came across In the Pines. It’s not quite the version covered by Nirvana on their Unplugged album (also, I believe, on this list) - that one is closer to the Leadbelly version that I’m pretty sure I’ve heard. But the lyric 

“The longest train I ever knew 

Was a hundred coaches long. 

And the only girl I ever loved 

Is on that train and gone” 

I’ve heard that before, so possibly I’ve heard the Louvin Brothers before. But since it’s a traditional song, maybe somebody else’s version. Anyway, their version is pretty good. If you were going to pick a few tracks from here, that one, Dear Katie, and maybe Kentucky. 

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