Different voices, speaking in tongues

Jack LaLanne and Charlie Louvin had absolutely nothing in common (as if you couldn't tell from the above images).

Other than the fact they died this week.

Yet they each played a part in my growing up many years ago.

My mother loved Jack LaLanne, watching him religiously and trying to exercise along with him as she valiantly, and unsuccessfully, tried to lose weight. LaLanne was the encouraging Adonis who made anyone believe they could get in shape and change their life.

Even if that never happened for her, I think she really believed it might. And perhaps that was the glimmer of hope she needed. There was a period of time when LaLanne was a fixture in our house, appearing every morning on our 21-inch Philco. He would often address his audience as “mother.” At 4 or 5 years old, I thought he really knew my mom and called her by name. Maybe she felt that way too.

Charlie Louvin, as part of the Louvin Brothers, sang those high lonesome ballads with a harmony as pure as the mountain water my father drank as a boy. It was a sound that resonated deeply with my dad, and even though we didn’t have much of their music in the house, he would search for it in the darkness at night on WWVA from Wheeling, WV. He loved that music his entire life, and I guess you could say he never lost that Louvin feeling.

And now, the Louvin Brothers – who paved the way for the Everly Brothers (and in turn, The Beatles), Emmylou Harris and The Bryds – sound as ancient and far away as those long-ago nights traveling back from my grandmother’s house listening to the spooky Appalachian sounds through the static of the AM radio.