McGovern & Kennedy in Journal Square

This year is the 40^th anniversary of the last time a candidate for president gave a speech in Journal Square.

I thought about the flier for McGovern Rally after seeing it in the display of Political Paraphernalia at the Main Branch of the Public Library. A politician running for president coming to Jersey City is far from unheard, but these days the setting is Liberty State Park. The Statue of Liberty in the background makes an optimum photo op. McGovern was at Journal Square. I was intrigued, so I went the microfiche (actually it may be microfilm but I like saying microfiche better) to find out some more. The pictures on this post are scans from print outs of the microfiche, forgive the quality. But reading the newspaper accounts shed some light on history, relevant in this another presidential election year.

Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy and Senator George McGovern at a campaign stop in Journal Square, less than week before McGovern lost to Richard Nixon.

The Journal Square Rally was on Halloween; Election Day fell on November 7^th that year. This was the last ditch attempt to literally rally the party faithful. Senator George McGovern, the news accounts mention, had made other stops that day in the Northeast. He was trailing in the polls and needed all the help he could get and Senator Edward Kennedy was that help. The newspaper also mentioned that actor Ben Gazarra was with them; the only celebrity mentioned. The picture from the Star Ledger, the one that features Kennedy and McGovern, has an unidentified man in the background between them who seems to resemble Gazarra. A great actor, but not exactly a headline grabber; Husbands the great Cassavettes film came out in 1970 and that seems to have been his biggest film. McGovern shored up the art house film vote.

McGovern’s speech ridiculed Nixon of course, mainly for the Vietnam War. Nixon was the Moloch of my childhood. Watergate is still synonymous with political corruption and the abuse of power. He was the only president to resign. But the resignation happened in 1974. He won his 1972 reelection in a landslide. The only state McGovern won was Massachusetts. People loved Nixon, which just made the revelations of his conduct as president even more repulsive. Two years after his historic victory, Nixon was driven from office and to this day his name denotes paranoid leadership and political corruption, his biggest scandal Watergate is still the go-to media phrase when political scandal hits the news.

In 1972, the Paris Peace Talks, which eventually led to a cease fire (and a collapse of the South Vietnam government), dominated the other national headlines of the day. Nixon’s Peace With Honor Strategy seemed to be working.

The Rally made the front pages, with the Jersey Journal headline saying: McG Cheers Hudson Dems. On the jump page, there’s a UPI story about a cartoon in the GOP’s “official New Jersey newspaper” that the republicans defended as “not racist.”

“The Cartoon showed Sen. George McGovern surrounded by six“supporters,” the whites are dressed as hippies, two blacks are bare chested and one appears to have a ring in his nose. The other is carrying a sign which reads “Welfare.” One White is carrying a sign which reads “Busing.” Under the cartoon was the headline, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” This blatant appeal to casual bigotry was inherent in the U.S. political discourse, but the Republicans were unabashed about using this tactic – Reagan had his welfare queens, Bush I his Willie Horton. Nixon’s famed Southern strategy was effective on both sides of the Mason Dixon line.

Ted Kennedy was the main draw for the Journal Square Rally. This was before Chappaquiddick, the divorce and other exploits that undermine this great liberal’s legacy. If there was anyone able to rally the faithful and get out the vote, it would be the surviving Kennedy brother, who in 1972 seemed predestined to the white house. McGovern’s vice president was Sargent Shriver (Marie’s dad), a Kennedy family member.

The Star Ledger clearly states 15,000 attended. The Jersey Journal says “estimates of the crowd in the 43 degree weather put the number at well over 5,000, perhaps as many as 10,000.”

 

The jump page of the Jersey Journal featured a related story of a racist cartoon distributed by Republicans. The birther nutcases and “food stamp” president accusations echo racial resentment emotions. The cartoon was distributed in N.J. only four years after Martin Luther King was shot.

The Jersey Journal ran this lousy picture of Senator McGovern in Journal Square. This picture, coupled with the Journal reporting on the rally, a pro-Nixon sentiment is apparent.

I wonder why the newspaper doesn’t want to pin down a number. It is unusual for a reporter to evade accurate crowd estimates, practically unheard to have the approximation double.

The crowd numbers were joked about at the podium.

“Sen. Kennedy, aware of the Halloween, also wanted to know whether next Tuesday’s election result will give the public “the trickery of this Administration or the Treat of McGovern.”

Dislocations Note: Nixon was called Tricky Dick, even before Watergate. Teddy knew how to turn a phrase!

“Kennedy, after referring to the fine reception given his brother Jack in Journal Square in 1960, scanned the crowd as he said “McGovern can come from behind in 1972.” Then he added, “20,000 in Journal Square can’t be wrong. A voice from the crowd sought to correct him, saying “40,000.” Taking the cue, Kennedy jestingly raised the figure to “100,000.”

So I did a little more archival digging. In 1960, the Hudson Dispatch headline: 20,000 Hail Nominee at Journal Sq.; Above that are banner headlines: Sees County as Key to Victory/Kennedy Counts on Vote in Hudson.” To have 20,000 invoked again 12 years later shows how important the JFK JSQ rally was to Democrats.

And who was JFK running against? Why Richard Nixon of course.

Notice the difference in tone between the 1960 and 1972 accounts. Jersey City was and is a Democratic stronghold and that stronghold was – and to a certain extent still is – Irish and Roman Catholic. In 1960, how could the citizenry not be excited about one of their own (in spite of being the fortunate son of a wealthy scion) doing what Al Smith could not?

Another subhead says: “Next President Introduced by Mayor Grogan.”

One big happy big city political machine scratching mine, scratching yours, scratching ours. Soon after JFK’s 1963 Assassination one of our major thoroughfares was renamed Kennedy Boulevard.

The 1972 enthusiasm for a Journal Square rally by the Democratic candidate is not just not as high, it is all but absent.

In 1972, besides the youngest Kennedy Brother, and Gazarra the dais included, according to the Jersey Journal report Mayor Paul Jordan, and a Senate contender, a Representative, a County Supervisor and two freeholders.

Where were the union leaders? In 1972, Jersey City was a union town, factories were buzzing with business? Union votes put JFK – an ideological heir to FDR – into the white house.

The hard hats as they came to be called, did not come out for McGovern. McGovern had a PEACE NOW platform, but the unions did not like the war protestors, which they saw as unruly and disrespectful. Yet, why would they support a Republican, seemingly vote against their economic interests?

In our current era, Republicans are trying to outlaw unions and failing at that, weakening them at every turn with the ironically named Right to Work laws.

About a half century separates the two union-busting administrations of Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan. During this interim only two GOPers to become president were Ike Eisenhower and Tricky Dick, and while certainly conservative and of the right, they were not overtly anti-union. FDR won 4 terms Truman two, JFK and LBJ combined for another eight. Pro-worker economic polices had become so entrenched into our economic system and society in general that Ike or Tricky Dick could never have been elected if they were anti-union. Unions were not threatened by Republicans until the Gipper.

Ronald Reagan, got huge union support to win the white house, but h was the one who truly hoodwinked American workers. He claimed union bona fides when he pulled out his SAG card at a debate; he was still a member of the Actor’s Union. Once in office, he busted the Air Traffic Controllers Union and Republicans have had waged war against people who want decent wages, healthcare and retirement benefits, safe workplaces and job security. And, they mostly won– the J.C. factories that used to employ thousands with middle class blue collar jobs now operate in foreign lands and pay slave wages. Stock Holders got richer and consumer still don’t care who manufactures the products we buy.

New Jersey is renowned for splitting the ticket in the voting booth. FDR, JFK, LBJ relied on city political machines to get out the vote among the Democratic faithful, by 1972 those machines were starting to sputter. Also, until Watergate, Nixon was loved by the people but not his party. He had no coattails in New Jersey.

Besides the lack of union representation, were the youth leaders at the McGovern Journal Square rally? This was the first election 18 year olds could vote! By 1972 the leftist movements, such as the Students for a Democratic Society had become more and more radicalized – either professional provocateurs like Abbie Hoffman’s Yippies or the violent terrorists like the Weatherman Underground. Of course, under Nixon, the FBI persecuted leftists of any stripe– I think Hoffman might have been on the run from the law after an FBI set up drug bust during the 72 election. Four years before, the youth were “neat & clean for Gene,” supporting the 1968 Peace Candidate Eugene McCarthy. By 1972, the youth were seen as wild, out of control, stoned on drugs, screaming obscenities, calling cops pigs. College Students had provoked Ohio National guardsman to shoot at them during a Kent State riot.

There simply were no valid youth leaders to bring meaningful support for McGovern; the likely risk was that too many long hairs would have further turned off the dwindling union support. The first time 18 year olds could vote, a right that had been one of the issues in the 60s – old enough to be drafted but not old enough to vote – and by the time they could, the young republicans could organize those who leaned right, but young progressives had no one to encourage them to register.

After the King assassination, the Civil Rights movement, in spite of winning important Great Society legislation under LBJ, was in disarray and suffering a back lash. More militant organizations, such as the Black Panthers – who were being systemically decimated by J. Edgar’s FBI – became the dominant image of civil rights. No local civil rights leaders seem to have spoken at the McGovern Journal Square rally. Other movements – the so called identity politics – which included Feminists, Gays and Latinos (and environmentalists) – were still nascent stages in 1972. Cultural bigotry was deeply rooted in the mostly white and male Union Movement in 1972; worker rights seemed either unrelated or conflicting with the identify politics of heretofore oppressed social groups.

The coalitions that had passed the Civil Rights legislation– and the right of 18 year olds to vote – no longer coalesced. They split over the Vietnam War, and the newer groups could not find common ground with the civil rights activists or union leaders. The upheavals in the United States in the 1960s were tantamount to Civil War and by the early 70s, the economy started to go into the crapper – higher oil prices, inflation. Everyone was looking for somebody to blame. McGovern simply could not overcome the forces of the times; he was unable to inspire the populace like JFK and his New Frontier rhetoric, which was really just an extension of FDR. To make matters worse, Angela Davis, a Black Panther Feminist now remembered mainly for her extraordinary Afro, ran a third party campaign draining additional and much needed leftist support from McGovern.

Nixon represented stability in 1972. People wanted that after the turmoil and change of the 1960s.

So after the McGovern rally in Journal Square, what happened on Election day?

All the democratic in Hudson County Won; and Nixon trounced McGovern by a whopping 73,796 votes. Nixon won 58 percent of the vote in Jersey City, one of the highest in Hudson County – yet the rest of Democrats won Even though the J.C. Mayor appeared with McGovern in Journal Square, he could not enthuse the voters, yet local party loyalty remained entrenched. Headline: “Nixon and Dems Win Big.”

In retrospect, an irony but that was the reality of the times. Also, New Jersey voters have a long history of splitting the ticket.

In 1960, the Jersey Journal headline declared: “It’s Official: Jack Defeated Dick by 60,607 in Hudson Country.”

The article states: “Jersey City Gave Kennedy a plurality of 34,586.” Twelve years later, 52,208 Jersey City citizens voted for Nixon.

Well, maybe that’s why there hasn’t been a Political Rally in Journal Square by a Presidential Candidate since the McGovern campaign.

I hate to pick on the Jersey Journal, but they had a pro-Nixon bias. The Star Ledger photograph shows Kennedy and McGovern at the podiums, very respectful. The Jersey Journal has an unflattering picture, McGovern’s double chins in full view and this huge hand in the corner. Either they didn’t send a photographer early enough to cover the whole event (I mean, Journal Square is named after the newspaper, their offices are what, a block from the bus station?) and he got their too late for a good shot or the photo editor selected this picture to make “McG” look as unappealing as possible.

We have newspaper men on the payroll, don’t we Tom?

In its election day round up, a Jersey Journal editorial analyzes McGovern’s loss: “The president could never be as bad as McGovern insisted Nixon was.”

Well, he wasn’t the first or last political opinion writer to eat his words. Nixon was worse than McGovern implied.Nixo The full range of Nixon’s antics, from his enemy’s list, invasions of Cambodia, etc. etc., culminating in Watergate and his being the first president to resign from office in 1974, would come to light over the next two years, although in 1972 the wire taps and the actual break in were known, if under-covered news items. By 1973, Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s vice president, resigned. He was a tax fraud and bribe taker. The ripples of Nixon conduct from 1972-1972, the cover ups and the lying about the cover ups, rippled throughout the land, felt in every home.

People loved Nixon. I remember people loving Nixon. And, when his corruption came to light – his lies upon lies to the American people were revealed, the love turned to hatred. People who didn’t vote for him hated him – like Clinton or Bush II, Nixon could enflame ire – but he was also liked by many. Post-Nixon, even well liked politicians are not held in the same esteem as they used to be, even by those who esteem them. Nixon bequeathed America a cynicism about politicians that has only gotten stronger.

Imagine if we were spared a Nixon second term. Imagine if the 2^nd anti-Nixon Journal Square Rally was as successful as the first.

John F. Kennedy gave a stump speech in Journal Square during the 1960 election campaign. In Hudson County, JFK easily beat Richard Nixon. Twelve years later, McGovern could not inspire a similar Jersey City Magic.

A better shot of the election memorabilia display and the original McGovern Rally handbill that inspired this blog. Go to the Jersey City Library, main branch and see it for yourself.                                                                                     

Unofficial Summer

I saw my first hula hoop at Creative Grove of the year. I guess the official unofficial start of the summer has officially started. (The unofficial official unofficial start of the start of the summer was two weeks prior when The Avengers opened).  

Like other stray dancers, she gyrated the hula hoop to rythmn of the beats. A drum circle –actually more of a half-circle – formed around the DJ table. He was spining baselines, wordless, warm techno.  Palms pounded various size bongos. The toddlers were delighted. A guy in EMT uniform walks up to table carrying duffle bags, in which he carried his congas. Let’s get this percussion party started!

The sun came out with the full force of late May as afternoon became evening.  We had several rainy days, making our way under the grimly overcast. Everyone wants to be outside, enjoy the newness of the season and the sun.

Another Friday in Jersey City, another Creative Groove. This weekly flea market is an excuse for the community to be one, for Jersey City to display and revel in all its United Nations glory. It’s best on a comfortably hot Sunny Day. Everyone left their jackets in the closet. We’re inspired to tarry, feel the sun on our arms and face.

Amongst the vendors of jewelry and t-shirts, arts & crafts, food items and used CDs, a bake sale table for the Parrish of the Resurrection. Children scamper every where, excited by the music, and being with each other as their parents watch and laugh amongst themselves.  For a few hours at least, the disparate elements of our city without a main street dissolve and the variety and contrasts of old timers and newcomers is no longer an anomaly. The drums are like the sun, there for everybody.

Political Paraphernalia

 

I couldn’t get a good shot. The light was terrible and the Plexiglas case kept giving off reflections.  It’s a handbill for a 1972 rally in Journal Square with George McGovern and Edward Kennedy.  The mind reels.  Nixon – the Moloch of my childhood – won pretty handily that year, but what optimism must have been felt.  City political machines invoke corruption and government ineffectiveness, especially as Great Society policies became unfairly maligned as contributing to the economic troubles of the 1970s. But 1972 one imagines as being  a last gasp, at least here Jersey City, unions were strong, major civil right battles had been ended, the flight to the suburbs had yet to be completed. It was also Halloween no less; think about that, less than week from Election Day. This was a major rally; A Kennedy was coming to Jersey City. It was the first election where 18 year olds could vote.

The handbill is part of an exhibit at the main branch of the Jersey City Library, my favorite place to hangout.  The display is in the corner of the stairase between the 3^rd and 4^th floors. Robert Kennedy, Shirley Chisolm, JesseJackson, LBJ.  Elections always seem to inspire sports metaphors, but I won’t use one here, just stating the notion to set up a sports analogy, how baseball for example is summed up by the world series, who won the world series; 162 games and we wind up with one president. Like or not, the President dominates how we view history. The relationship with the supreme leader can be politically all-defining of an era, at least a decade, especially as the executive branch has gained so much in power. 

Seeing these buttons and bumper stickers and various political paraphernalia reminds one though of choices not taken, idealism that couldn’t reach enough people, or slogans like Compassionate Conservative or Morning in America that seemed to appeal to deeply held beliefs and value only to turn out to be lies that made the rich richer and strengthened injustice.

My father always took me when he went to vote. I love tovote. I do, really.  We should care about all election but we don’t care as much as when it’s the presidential election.Every four years the circus comes to town; but that’s not right either because it seems the presidential race is constant. There’s at least a year of primaries for the non-incumbent party and a year before then where we get the declarations of who will be running. Right after the election, the speculation begins for the next one immediately and as a kind of dress rehearsal we get the mid-term elections of congressional freaks. There’s too much damn election attention; it’s not the entirety of history, who wins the white office even if you think the be all and end all of the baseball season is the last week in October.

Well, even with the election cycle being so extended, there is the final heat at the end of summer, with the conventions, the debates. Let the polls and prognosticators begin anew, begin again. This exhibit reminds us of what came to pass; and what might have been.

Port of Call: Hoboken

It was a windy day, late winter. Most of the port activity makes take place on the Manhattan side, but we live along a busy coast; shipping, passenger liners and the recreational boats of the wealthy. Saw this Coast Guard ship docked in the slip between the Erie Lackawanna station and Frank Sinatra Park. The wind was strong enough to whistle. The sweeping gusts rocked the ship back and forth. The waterfront gives our eyes compelling vistas, inspires reveries and musings. It’s also an enterprise with many players, where our maritime military force is required. It’s something that is obvious but we’re usually oblivious about until a ship sales into port to remind us about all that goes on so we can reside in cities with a river to view.

STOP Stop Corruption in Hudson County

 

So that’s why corruption in Hudson County persists. A well meaning but misplaced bumper sticker Stopped stopping it.

Satan is Real by Charlie Louvin

Incandescent. That’s always the word that comes to mind when I think of the Louvin Brothers. Their close harmonies shine brightly. In his posthumously published autobiography, Satan is Real, Charlie Louvin sheds some light on that preternatural glow of when he and Ira sang. He writes that Billy Bob Thornton (yes, Slingblade), couldn’t tell who was “leading the song, Ira or me. And the truth is that neither Ira nor I really ever did lead a song all the way through. We changed parts whenever we needed.”

The intensity of their symbiosis helped make the music of the Louvin Brothers uncannily ever-green. The music I love most contains two characteristics – authenticity and texture. Often, that duality seems to necessitate a kind of roughness – I mean, my favorite as readers know is Bob Dylan (always Dylan), who is not known for his silky voice, his guitar (or keyboard) technique, or the sophistication of his arrangements. Yet, when it comes to authenticity and texture, Bob sets the standard by the rest are measured.

 
The Louvin recordings are smooth, ultra-smooth. They have an unmistakable high treble sound; Their phrasing is never affected; the lyrics are always sung with an articulate crispness. The Louvin Brothers sound – if not their songs – would be out of place on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. Compared to some of their contemporaries, the Carter Family or RoyAcuff or Hank Williams, the Louvins are down right commercial – sonically – even though they were never nearly as popular.

That smoothness works as a counter balance to the songs, which Emmy Lou Harris is famously quoted as calling “Scary and Washed in Blood.” When it comes to authenticity, Johnny Cash comes to mind as one of the few who can match the Louvins. The songs – whether one of the many the brothers wrote and/or the covers or traditional tunes they put their distinct stamp upon – create a world, a Louvin land that mirrors our own reality – life is hard but love is worth living for; it’s a world of family, faith, work and tragedy.

Charlie’s autobiography is named after one of the greatest records anyone has ever made, and the title track is as unforgettable as it is original.

“Satan is real, working in spirit, you can see him and hear him in this world everyday, Satan is real, working with power, He can tempt you and lead you astray,” the brothers sing, against a simple country lick. Then a pump organ fades in, and Ira begins the spoken word body of the song:  “I attended service at a little church in the country not long ago. The prayer was led by an old country preacher who then raised his hands as everyone stood and sang: “My God is real”. A warm breeze through the open windows brought in the smell of new mown hay in a nearby field, and the singing of birds could be heard in the moment of silence, as the preacher opened his Bible to read. And then a little old man stood up, bent with age, his hair thin and white, and said: “Preacher, tell them that Satan is real too, you can hear him in songs that give praise to idols and sinful things of this world, you can see him in the destruction of homes torn apart.”

Ira tells a story within a story within a story. We are with him, then we are in the church with him, and then, as we hear this old man’s story, we are in the old man’s life. This lean piece of prose – a sermon – is equal to any literary music that I love such as Lou Reed or Patti Smith and has aged better than two other Rock examples that come to mind, Celebration of the Lizard by The Doors or By The Time I Get to Phoenix by Isaac Hayes. The reason many critics, and other listeners, have not deemed this song (and other Louvin masterpieces) is worthy of literary acknowledgement is that it seriously deals with Christian theology. It’s not that you have to believe to appreciate the song, but many of us still need to get over a bias against theological thought. Once you do, the sheer poetry of this song will leave you stunned.  

One of the trademarks of some great American writers – Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, William Carlos Williams, and Raymond Carver – is the directness and familiarity of the American idiom they utilize. They write how people talk; eschewing fancy language and overt multiple layers of metaphor. Their language is sparse, unencumbered, to the point. The Louvin Brothers lyrics in Satan are Real and elsewhere adopt a similar directness. They cut to the chase. While as literary as any other lyric, then and now, their merits have been rarely appreciated. Why? I would argue that it is because of unfortunate generalizations about Christian, White Southern culture as well as many critics and radio stations relegating blue grass and acoustic country – old timey – music to a musical ghetto. Sure, we can love O Brother Where Art Thou, but the music is more novelty than art. The Cohen Brothers film is not exactly free of camp when it came to “old timey” music.

Give yourself over to the sincerity of the Louvin Brothers, and you will be glad to let go of your bias. The old man continues testifying: “I know that Satan is real for once (Ira pronounces it ‘onced’, the Louvins never evade their Alabama accents) I had a happy home. I was loved and respected by my family. I was looked upon as a leader in my community. And then Satan came into my life. I grew selfish and un-neighborly. My friends turned against me, and finally my home was broken apart. My children took their paths into a world of sin.”

Louvin songs always have a twist. In I Don’t Believe You Met My Baby, a guy is love with gal, they’re at a dance but she dances with another guy, who she introduces as “my baby.” The narrator’s heart is broken until the two start laughing. She informs him the guy is actually her brother then she agrees to marry the narrator. A sadder song, A Tiny Broken Heart, depicts the harsh, inescapable reality of economic class divisions. A seven year old boy sees his that his playmate, a girl who lives next door, is moving away. The family was visited from “men from the town.” The family next door was share croppers. They have no choice but to leave. The boy is ready to “give her all my toys, that dear Santa gave and give her my pennies from piggy bank.” The listener knows nothing can stop economic inevitabilities. We see – and feel – the situation through the narrator. Our hearts break along with the young boy’s.

Those two examples reveal the “material” portion of the Louvin world, but a song like Satan is Real reveals the “nonmaterial” or spiritual realm, is another part of that same world. Louvin world is as physical as it is metaphysical. The old man in Satan is Real has destroyed his life because of Sin. Notice that the sins while vague, unspecified, they are injurious to the community – “selfish and un-neighborly” – both the self and society suffer punishment. How is that destruction – the repercussions of the sin – defined? “My friends turned against me, and finally my home was broken apart.” The final holocaust is a perversion of one of God’s original commands: be fruitful and multiply – “My children took their paths into a world of sin.”

Think about the scenario, an old man testifies in his community. He does not ask forgiveness. Instead, he issues a dire warning: his actions disrupted the social order – in other words, the entire world. He ends: “Yes, preacher, it’s sweet to know that God is real, and to know that in Him all things are possible, and we know that Heaven is a real place, where joy shall never end. But sinner friend, if you’re here today, Satan is real too, and hell is a real place, a place of everlasting punishment.”

Satan is Real explores an individual’s role in a community and how the invisible world, in this “mythology” at least, is impacted by that individual, and how as a result, that invisible world will then undermine the stability of the community.

In Satan is Real (the book), Charlie says:  “Most of our gospel songs weren’t really guilt songs, but they were obvious songs. They’d tell you that if you’re a good person, a righteous person, then you can go to heaven. But if you think you can do anything you want and still go to heaven, you’re full of shit. God’s always right there when you think you’re getting away with something. There’s nothing that escapes him and nothing he doesn’t know.”

Like many, the first Louvin brother’s song I heard was The Christian Life, covered by the Byrd’s on their classic Sweet Heart of the Rodeo. I never knew it was a Louvin song until I encountered Satan is Real (the reissued CD). The Byrd’s were great, but if you listen to the two versions you notice that Roger McGuinn’s delivery is very tongue in cheek. The Louvin’s version is stronger because of their sincerity – the counter culture irony so inherent in late 60s Country Rock is completely absent.

Country gospel songs were new to me when I first got Satan is Real. The record I got next, Tragic Songs of Life (for years they were the only two CDs in print), a secular collection, is really just as good. I recommend it to every young songwriter I know, calling it the best non-Dylan collection of songs. Besides Tiny Broken Heart, they do their unforgettable take on In The Pines, a Leadbelly song, and the Louvins Knoxville Girl, a classic murder ballad. The narrator murders his lover because of her “roving eyes,” his jealousy about her infidelity, real or unreal, drags him into madness, where he his life ends in jail.

Charlie writes: “the greatest percentage of people who listen to country music, they dig those sad old songs. They always have. There’s tragedy in life, I guess is the reason. Sometimes I think there’s more tragedy than there is life. And we need those old songs, even if nobody in new country music sings them anymore.”

Charlie Louvin died in January of last year. By then I bought every Louvin CD I could find, but after his passing, I picked up the remainder of the oeuvre, although I may still be missing some early MGM records. Their recording history seems sketchy, and quite frankly, if you are looking for specific discographies, Satan is Real will not help. There’s a box set out there but it’s too expensive for me and even its completeness is in doubt.

There have been many days where I dwelt entirely in the Louvin world, listening only to their music. They are on many of my play lists. Their incandescence always improves my mood.

Satan is Real is a great read. It is one of those books you can pick up and become entranced by any random page. The life of Louvin Brothers could be a Louvin Brothers Song. The book was literarily dictated on his death bed. Charlie died, of pancreatic cancer, at the age of 83, two months after the book was completed.

Benjamin Whitmer was his confessor. Whitmer has done a wonderful job preserving the man’s voice, which is plain spoken and sensible. Charlie prefers common sense to wisdom; he is not keen on introspection, particularly when it comes to creating the actual songs. How many takes did Satan is Real take? What was the brother’s song writing process like? Well, you get no answers to such queries. What you do get is a down to earth guy who tells telling his story, thoughtfully and deliberately.

The Louvins didn’t graduate high school; they grew up in a hardscrabble farm, during the depression, where music was the only respite from labor on Sand Mountain in rural Alabama.

Making it meant driving all night from gig to gig, which ranged from pool halls to altar calls. Charlie married his first sweet heart and they remained together until his death. In the books dedication, he writes to her – with a macabre touch not out of place in Louvin world – “I prayed to God for one request, that whenever I go, I go before you.”

Ira was an alcoholic – larger then life, for sure and immensely talented. Listening to some of that Mandolin picking you realize he is one of the masters of that instrument. But he had a rage that basically cost the act gigs and opportunities. The most famous – covered in Peter Guralnick’s Elvis Presley biography – is where Ira, drunk, insults Elvis, which Charlie blames for the reason that Elvis never sang a Louvin song, even though the brothers were a favorite of his Mama’s (and Elvis loved his Mama!). 

Charlie’s brother who just couldn’t get out of his own way, with the booze or the women. You can feel his sibling frustration. Many of the sore points are still tender in spite of occurring more than 50 years ago.  “Ira did a lot of dumb things during this time in life, but probably the dumbest thing he ever did was to get married a third time..,.” to Faye, a woman who also an alcoholic. Later Charlie says: “I should’ve taken a shovel head and beaten the shit out of her.” Sounds like something he has probably muttered hundreds of times over the years. Whitmer’s editing for the telling, often sardonic detail, consistently entertains.

A womanizing musician with a substance abuse problem is not exactly unheard of but the paradox of Ira Louvin is his apparent hypocrisy. Louvin Brothers songs like Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea or The Drunkard’s Doom, decry not just the sinfulness of drinking, but its devastation of lives. They appeal to the Carrie Nation audience. Other songs, such as Broad Minded (“the word broad minded is spelled S-I-N), a puritan anthem, opposing social drinking, dancing and what seems like fun of any kind. In another sermon within a song, Ira quotes scripture to support his accusations.

Ira did not practice what he sang.  Charlie documents his abusive relationships with co-dependent alcoholic spouses, his philandering, his run-ins with the law. One time at the sight of cops backstage Charlie says, “What has my brother done now.”

Ira was out of control. His drinking soon cost them gigs and eventually ruined their reputation with promoters, the music industry, their record label and even their audience. A half century or so might have passed, but Charlie’s resentment remains palpable. Ira warned against Satan in song, but in his life he could not resist temptation, regardless of the consequences of his actions had on his loved ones. He ended his life as one nasty drunk.

Charlie offers an intriguing insight: “The thing about Ira was that he had a gift for songwriting, true, but he also had another gift that interfered with his songwriting. It was that calling to be a preacher. He knew the Bible, and the way he wrote his songs, the material that was in the songs, the way he placed it and used it, he would been tremendous. Everybody on Sand Mountain always told me that was the cause of his drinking problem. That he was called to be a preacher, but refused, becoming a picker and grinner instead, and trying to drown out the call with liquor and women.”

There’s a lot of sadness to go around with Ira. The Louvin Brothers grew up, during the depression, in a culture where creativity and self expression were granted little esteem. Society restricted your roles – as if preaching and songwriting – spirituality or art – were absolute, either/or choices. Ira and Charlie were rural men. They did not graduate high school Their only future was to work all the time, on a Sand Mountain farm, like their father. Music was their only other option. But more than just the more appealing career choice, you do not make the kind of music they did without being driven. The Louvin Brother songs come from that human wellspring – the deep muddy river – they are some of the greatest songs in the American canon and the stories they tell are universal and timeless. They are the country music equivalent of Sherwood Anderson (Winesburg, Ohio) or Flannery O’Conner.

In Satan Is Real, you get the feeling neither of them quite knew what to make of their accomplishment. Their upbringing may not have enabled them to be fully aware of the achievement’s extent. For Charlie, picking and grinning was a good job that gave him the ability to raise a family. Ira seemed uninterested in stability, his talent never brought

him satisfaction, much less peace. He was haunted by the notion that art – and that very talent he worked so hard at mastering – may be just another “sinful thing” of this world. Great art does take a human toll to be created and maybe Ira just paid a bigger price.  Well, as the cover of the book proclaims: “A real life Cain & Abel Story,” and that’s sadly, what it proved to be. In this case, Abel lives and writes the history.

The Louvin Brothers break up during the early 60s and by 1964, Ira dies in a car accident. They never really reconciled. Their family remained torn apart.

If Ira only lived a few years longer, maybe he would have gotten the help for his addiction that Johnny Cash and George Jones eventually found. Maybe, like old bluesmen whose careers were renewed by the Blues Revival headed by Brits such as the Rolling Stones, the Animals and Eric Clapton, when country rock hit it big a similar rediscovery could have elevated the Louvins career. Gram Parsons was a famous fan. The influence of the Louvin Brothers is apparent in the late 60s Country Rock. The Louvin songs have that share the rustic surrealism of the Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, Big Pink, The Band (brown album), Working Man’s Dead and American Beauty. But “real” country music was ignored by FM rock stations of the era, so it would take another few decades before the Louvin music would become widely available, as Americana and Roots redefined musical categories, breaking down many previous divisions.

Alas, Ira recorded one solo record, which is mostly mediocre. Charlie Louvin fared a little better – he had more hits as a solo artist he points out – and his songs sound like a competent poor man’s version of George Jones. He has this one song I dig, “See the Big Man Cry,” where a boy keeps seeing a man following him, crying. The man is the boy’s father. His parents are estranged. A nice country weeper about a child too young to understand a restraining order.  In the 00s, a small record label based in the East Village released some solo records, mostly Charlie re-recording old Louvin Brother classics. A tribute record was also released. All pleasant listening, but Charlie’s voice was cracked, his tenor a rasp.

In spite of some high points, the solo work is strangely distant from the Louvin Brothers sound. The music, the attitude, the types of songs, of the solo work is vastly different from the duo. The incandescent was lost forever.  

Duos – especially brothers, such as the Delmore Brothers, whom the Louvins did a tribute record to – were mainstays of mid-20^th century country music. The Louvins were popular during the tail end of that trend, but by the 60s, the end of their career, interest in this type of music had evaporated. Not only were the Louvin Brothers the last, and not only were they the best, their symbiosis created a world listeners will be entering for decades to come. I love that world, it’s another Invisible Republic that reveals truths about the human condition and life in America.