Alabama
Wild Sweet OrangeAll-Time Best Band: The Louvin Brothers
All-Time Best Solo Artist: Hank Williams
Band You Need to Hear, Like, Now: Wild Sweet Orange
Like all good musical siblings, Charlie and Ira Louvin were excellent bickerers. And Ira was an alcoholic before rock and roll was even born. Still, the Appalachian gospel-flavored duo practically invented country close harmony, and melded their beautiful, soaring tenors with bizarre Pentecostal imagery to create such classics as Satan Is Real. Damn right he is. | Hank Williams’s death ranks second (behind Hendrix’s) for all-time musical bad-ass bucket kick: between gigs, Hammerin’ Hank OD’d in the back of his Caddy. You’d expect nothing less from the godfather of country music. (And we don’t even hold Hank Williams III agernst him, neither.) | If filmmaker Noah Baumbach were an indie-rock quartet from the Deep South, he might sound like Birmingham’s Wild Sweet Orange. More polite (and literary) than Kings of Leon, WSO can still crackle with apostolic fire.
Video: Hank Williams
Video: The Louvin Brothers
Listen: The Louvin Brothers, "Freight Train Boogie"
Listen: Hank Williams, "Long Gone Lonesome Blues"
Listen: Wild Sweet Orange, "Ten Dead Dogs"
