Satan is Real - the Ballad of the Louvin Brothers by Charlie Louvin with Benjamin Whitmer

(!t/Harper Collins) [Guest Review by Jake Austen] This book is genuinely fantastic -- honestly it may be my fave country music book I've ever read. Here's my full length review from the new issue of Time Out, which is one of the better book reviews I've written, hope you click it: http://timeoutchicago.com/arts-culture/books/15168296/satan-is-real-by-charlie-louvin-with-benjamin-whitmer-book-review, but there's a few things I'd like to add. There's some tasteful and riveting name dropping in the book, including a nice parallel of the young Louvins hanging outside a Roy Acuff show they can't afford to get into, and a young Johnny Cash doing the same at a Louvins show, plus there's some really funny and wild backstage Opry politics  recalled. And there are delicious descriptions of Ira Louvin's onstage meltdowns, where he'd smash his instrument to splinters, then later meticulously glue it back together. Plus some of their best lyrics are reprinted, the photos are awesome, and the design, looking like an old, beat up dime pulp novel, is as seductive as Old Scratch himself.