Louvin Brothers – Love And Wealth: The Lost Recordings

Wonderful news for Louvin Brothers fans, country music historians, or anyone who loves the simple but delightful music that Charlie and Ira Louvin recorded in the ’50s and ’60s.

Sundazed and Modern Harmonic have released Louvin Brothers – Love And Wealth: The Lost Recordings, a box set featuring 30 previously-unreleased demos cut by the brothers for Acuff-Rose, their publishing company. These are not polished, commercial recordings but the simple songwriter demos they had produced to help the publisher sell their songs to other artists.

Available as either a double LP or CD set, the project comes with extensive liner notes and many evocative photos of the boys from the Country Music Hall of Fame archives.

Some of the songs represented in these demos had been recorded by other country artists, but many others have never been heard by anyone outside of Acuff-Rose and people associated with the firm.

Each track features Ira on mandolin and Charlie on guitar, running through the songs in a straightforward manner in their trademark brother duet harmony. According to the liner notes, they simply cut these demos as new songs were written, and didn’t even copyright them until interest was shown by other performers. Many, therefore, just languished on the shelf during the intervening years.

They were discovered recently by Sundazed founder Bob Irwin, along with hundreds of other tape reels which are part of the Masters International catalog now owned by Sony. It’s literally a needle-in-a-haystack story that has saved these vital recordings from obscurity, or destruction!

Songs on the project include:

  • Spoken Message from Ira Louvin
  • It’s All Off
  • Take My Ring from Your Finger
  • I’ll Never Go Back (To the Ways of Sin)
  • Are You Missing Me?
  • Coo, Coo, Coo
  • Streamline Heartbreaker
  • (I’m Changing the Words To) My Love Song
  • Red Hen Boogie
  • Unpucker
  • Television Set
  • Discontented Cowboy
  • Two-Faced Heart
  • Don’t Compare The Future With The Past
  • That’s My Heart Talking
  • I’m Gonna Love You One More Time
  • Preach the Gospel
  • Born Again
  • They’ve Got the Church Outnumbered
  • The Sons and Daughters of God
  • Insured beyond the Grave
  • You’ll Meet Him in the Clouds
  • I Love God’s Way of Living
  • Love and Wealth
  • Bald Knob, Arkansas
  • Measured Love
  • Kiss Me Like You Did Yesterday
  • Would You Tear Down Your Castle
  • You’ll Forget
  • Never Say Goodbye

The album is available for sale now from all the popular download sites, and on LP or CD from Modern Harmonic.

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About the Author

John Lawless

John had served as primary author and editor for The Bluegrass Blog from its launch in 2006 until being folded into Bluegrass Today in September of 2011. He continues in that capacity here, managing a strong team of columnists and correspondents.