Charlie Louvin deserved a much bigger audience than he drew in Birmingham on Friday evening, Oct. 4. What better place, after all — given our city’s past, present and any of several possible futures — for a genuine Alabama-born legend to render his songs of sin and redemption, defilement and damnation; of love both faithless and true; of disaster and death and sorrow and murder?

Raised on north Alabama's Sand Mountain, Charlie Louvin started singing professionally with his brother Ira in the early 1940s.

As it was, there were only about 30 people in the house — the house being the low-ceilinged, linoleum-tiled fellowship hall of Baptist Church of the Covenant, on University Boulevard and 22nd Street South — when the 82-year-old Louvin and his much younger band took the tiny stage a little after seven o’clock. Seated on folding metal chairs scattered among round dining hall tables, we — I don’t think it presumptuous here to speak for all present — found ourselves roundly entertained for something close to two hours.

And why not? For starters, we’re talking about the surviving half of the Louvin Brothers. Raised on north Alabama’s Sand Mountain, Charlie and his older brother, Ira, started singing professionally in the early 1940s; from 1949 until they split in 1964, the Louvins were one of the most successful singing and songwriting duos in both gospel and country music. Their distinctive vocal arrangements — grounded in the “close harmony” singing style they learned in their church choir and from forerunners like the Monroe Brothers and the Delmore Brothers — influenced a host of later pop and rock musicians, most notably the Everly Brothers, Gram Parsons and the Byrds. The Louvin Brothers are members of the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.

Ira died in 1965. Charlie continued to perform on the Grand Ole Opry and make other solo appearances through the years, but had not recorded in more than a decade prior to 2006. “For a long time there,” he said at one point in the show, “people would ask me, ‘Why don’t you record something?’ I’d tell ‘em, Because I ain’t saved back the money I lost from emptying my bank account to record the last album.”

Enter New York City-based Tompkins Square Records. With an eclectic roster largely devoted to the ever-expanding definition of Americana music (a term, by the way, that raises Louvin’s hackles; “I don’t know what it means,” he told us the other night. “Some of it is terrible, and some of it sounds like country to me, and I don’t know what some of it is.”), the label backed a self-titled release by Louvin that, thanks to his elder statesman status, attracted guest appearances by the likes of George Jones, Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy, Will Oldham and members of Bright Eyes. Last year, he released a more austere follow-up, Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs, with each of the album’s tracks showcasing a low-tenor voice hushed by age, but resonant with soul.

The nagging infirmities of elderhood notwithstanding, Louvin remains a compelling presence onstage. Trim and bandy-legged, short even in the big white cowboy hat that tops off his straightforward country gentleman look — black boots, black slacks, white dress shirt, grey wool jacket — he delivered as singer, bandleader and storyteller. The band, which included Louvin’s oldest son, Sonny, on rhythm guitar, was a tight unit of Nashville pros, and there was an obvious affection between them and their octogenarian front man that gave even the few lagging moments in the show an easy, intimate feel. When the lead guitarist, Bill Kelly, slightly mistimed the end of a solo, Louvin cocked an eyebrow in a pantomime of commiseration, then sighed, “That’s a hard ‘un to learn, ain’t it, Bill?”

As a singer, Louvin is a fascinating study. The lyrics and phrasing seem to well up from somewhere deep in his torso, his eyes often cinched tight shut as he reaches down to bring them into the public ambit. Though he sometimes relied on written lyric sheets set out on a music stand in front of him, that was for newer material. On the old songs, the songs he sang with Ira, Louvin’s voice seemed to be coming from another realm, and only once or twice did his memory fail or his delivery waver. On “Ira,” a tribute to his brother Louvin wrote for his first Tompkins Square record, he sang, “I can still hear your part,” and when he summons a high note on a song like “The Christian Life,” or “Cash on the Barrelhead,” you can watch him and know that it’s not just a nice lyric. Knowing that Ira’s death came in a head-on collision with a drunk driver, hearing Charlie sing about whiskey and blood running together in the classic “Wreck on the Highway” is especially poignant.

I don’t remember when I first heard the Louvin Brothers, but I know that at some point, they became a touchstone of my consciousness of American music. Listening to the brothers then and to Charlie now, the thing that strikes me is how the songs hit the listener on an elemental level. Whether the subject is love or lust, bliss or rage, heaven or hell, the songs are about things that are real — the beauty and joy of life, tempered by the knowledge that our time on this earth is fleeting and that nothing earthly remains the same.

 I thought about these things after the show, as I waited to have Louvin sign the CD I’d bought. I’d love to tell him what his music has meant to me, but this wasn’t the time or place, even with only a dozen or so folks still milling around. Sitting at a table in the corner with his hat off, he looked a little tired, so I just shook his hand, handed him the CD and said, “Mr. Louvin, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve been listening to your music all my life.”

He looked up and grinned. “Well, you look like you’re pretty healthy anyway.”

“I’d say it’s done me more good than harm,” I smiled back. He asked my name, signed with a flourish, and shook my hand again. “Thank you, Mark,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

Mark Kelly is the contributing editor of Birmingham Weekly. Write to editor@bhamweekly.com.