An engaging look at a now-distant piece of country-music history.
The tempestuous history of country music’s Louvin Brothers, recalled by the younger musical sibling.
Ira and Charlie Louvin were the last of the great harmony duos; in the ’50s they launched a string of songs up the country charts and starred on Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. Here, Charlie (1927–2011) recounts the twosome’s rise from hardscrabble beginnings in Alabama’s cotton country to national fame. Basically self-taught, the brothers were reared on church singing before they launched an uphill professional career in the ’40s. Louvin maps the pair’s arduous journey through small-town radio gigs and endless regional touring, with flavorful, often profanely sketched observations about the hardships of making it on the road as a rising country act. Major music publisher Fred Rose took the Louvins under his wing, but after a pair of failed record deals, the brothers were ready to pack it in when they were signed to Capitol Records in the early ’50s. Starting in gospel, they reached the top with secular hits like “When I Start Dreaming” and classic albums like Tragic Songs of Life. The second half of the book focuses on reckless elder brother Ira, a pugnacious, womanizing alcoholic whose violence led his third wife to shoot him six times (he survived). In the face of Ira’s escalating madness, Charlie finally broke up the act in the early ’60s, and Ira was killed in a 1965 road accident. Charlie never manages to put his finger on what drove his brother to such heights of destructive behavior, but he still paints a chilling portrait of a brilliant musician intent on self-annihilation. Along the way, he offers entertaining cameo renderings of such stars as Elvis Presley, Roy Acuff, Johnny Cash, Bill Monroe, George Jones and Kris Kristofferson. The self-effacing Louvin dispenses with his solo work and latter-day career revival in a couple of brief chapters. Deep analysis is not his strong suit, but his amusing, prickly voice animates the book.
An engaging look at a now-distant piece of country-music history.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-206903-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: It Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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