Various Artists

Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’ (Universal South)

When it comes to country duets—not today’s dreaded “vocal events,” but performances in which two voices are woven together so tightly you sometimes can’t tell which is which—Charlie and Ira Louvin set a standard that remains unsurpassed. Beginning in 1947, they recorded over 200 sides, many of which they wrote themselves, before dissolving their act in 1963. Both launched solo careers—Ira’s brief, ending with his death in a car wreck in 1965, Charlie’s continuing to this day, including an improbable recent tour with pop-rockers Cake—but it was on the strength of those duets that the two were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001, rectifying what many saw as utterly incomprehensible neglect.

Not long after their induction into the Hall of Fame, Carl Jackson got a phone call from Ira’s daughter Kathy, asking him how he thought a tribute album to the Louvins might be received. “I said, ‘I think that would be awesome, the catalog of material is unbelievable, and they’re just so respected by people in every genre of music,’ ” Jackson recalls. After discussing the prospects of finding a home for the project with him, Louvin invited Jackson to be the album’s producer.

Released almost two years after that conversation, Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’ is a breathtaking, spirited homage that stands out dramatically in a field crowded with tributes. Its stature derives not just from its star power—though with names like Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, James Taylor and Glen Campbell, there’s plenty of that—nor from the familiarity of its best-known material, nor even from the performances themselves, but in significant part from the sensibility of producer Carl Jackson. When Kathy Louvin called him, she made the right—indeed, the almost inescapable—choice.

Although he just turned 50, Jackson can already look back on a professional career of more than 35 years. Born in Louisville, Miss., he grew up playing bluegrass banjo and guitar and made his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry with Jim & Jesse when he was 15. Already familiar with the Louvin Brothers’ sound, the job cemented his affection for their music: Jesse McReynolds had known the Louvins since he and Charlie had served together in Korea in the early ’50s; Jim & Jesse also were the first to record a tribute to the duo in 1969. By the mid-’70s, Jackson had taken a job in Glen Campbell’s band, and the two frequently sang “When I Stop Dreaming” together during the eight years he spent with Campbell.

Jackson moved to Nashville in 1980 and left Campbell’s employ four years later. Since then, he’s played a singular role in the industry, writing country hits and playing and singing with the likes of Haggard, Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Cash and Garth Brooks; he’s also written songs for and appeared on and produced albums by artists virtually unknown outside bluegrass circles. Rarely a front man, Jackson released three bluegrass albums between 1983 and 1990, while a mid-’80s try at a solo country career resulted in just four charting singles for Columbia, two of which almost cracked the Top 40. Better, or at least longer, than almost anyone else in Nashville during the past couple of decades, Jackson has mastered the art of serving the best of Music Row while retaining credibility and a demand for his talents in the persnickety worlds of bluegrass and Americana.

Much as it did in the work of the Louvin Brothers, that duality—or, better, that synthesis of the commercial and the rootsy—is evident throughout Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’. “I didn’t lay awake at night and think, ‘OK, what am I going to do here to appeal to everyone?’” Jackson says. “What I did was what I honestly felt was the best musically for the project. Having Glen Campbell and Leslie Satcher sing [‘When I Stop Dreaming’] together already made perfect sense in my head, because they’re both incredible singers. Leslie worships Glen Campbell; Glen didn’t know who Leslie Satcher was, but when he heard her, he couldn’t wait to get in the studio and sing with her.

“I knew that that would be the case,” Jackson goes on. “I knew that Rhonda Vincent and Joe Nichols would sound great together—and they knew it too. Sometimes the media, or the fans, or people here in town see a big gap between the mainstream and the others, but it doesn’t exist with those artists. It does not exist with Joe and Rhonda, or with James Taylor and Alison Krauss; they both have this incredible mutual respect. Glen Campbell now has that for Leslie Satcher, as she has always had for him. The only reason he didn’t have it before was because he didn’t know her. And that’s the way a lot of that worked.”

This bridging of styles and sensibilities is likewise apparent in the mix of backing musicians Jackson recruited. He called on Adam Steffey (mandolin) and Jim VanCleve (fiddle), two-fifths of Mountain Heart, a rising ensemble known largely to hardcore bluegrassers. Yet he also tapped mainstream country studio guitarist J.T. Corenflos—who reveals a hitherto unknown affinity for the playing of the Louvins’ brilliant accompanist Paul Yandell—as well as bass player Kevin Grantt, who like Jackson has contributed on both sides of the musical border. The result gently but noticeably updates the Brothers’ signature sound in a way that honors the original yet falls easily on contemporary ears.

In that respect, the CD serves as a kind of keystone, drawing together a stunning array of artists who, each in their own way, have furthered the dialog between the past and the present that lies at the heart of country music. Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, who deliver an aching “My Baby’s Gone,” played that role when the former took the Louvins’ “If I Could Only Win Your Love” into the country Top 10 in 1975 (No. 58 pop). Crowell, who once played in Harris’ band, revived Buck Owens’ 1960 hit “Above and Beyond” in 1989. Younger singers like Nichols, Dierks Bentley and Rebecca Lynn Howard carry the project forward into a new generation with their recordings; their contributions to the Louvins tribute have a natural air, fitting comfortably beside their own work. If you were to map the connections between the project’s participants, it would have the look of a spider web, much like a map of country music itself.

To its credit, the leadership at Universal South, the label that issued the record, seems to recognize the emblematic nature of the project. Label publicists were savvy enough to get copies to registrants at the recent Americana Music Association conference even as they were busy planning a video of James Taylor and Alison Krauss’ stunning duet on “How’s the World Treating You,” currently slated for commercial release later this month. If all goes well—that is to say, if the two sides of that mainstream industry/roots music community aren’t put off by the CD’s challenges to their preconceptions—Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’ could wind up introducing the music of the Louvin Brothers (and of the artists involved) to an exceptionally broad audience.