He was a major-league drinker, one given to sudden tantrums and outbursts of violence. More than once he trashed his mandolin on stage, and a fight with his third wife, Faye, led to a shooting. Ira was rushed to a Nashville hospital—three bullets, lodged too close to his spine for surgery, he carried with him to the day he died. “It was sort of like walking on eggs,” commented a band member who worked with the brothers during the latter days.Many think that the Louvins’ partnership broke up only with Ira’s death, but in fact they had split up two years earlier.
Both planned on pursuing solo careers with Capitol, and Ira was already working on a solo album and a single called “Yodel Miss Molly”; Charlie, whose sense of business and responsibility had served as ballast for the group from the first, had his first solo hit with a fine Bill Anderson song, “I Don’t Love You Anymore.” He had recruited Tommy Hagen, a North Carolina singer, to do Ira’s harmony parts. Despite their split, the brothers were not estranged, and Ken Nelson was still hoping the two would get back together.
But then, early one Sunday morning on June 20, 1965, as Ira and his new wife, Anne Young, were returning to Alabama from dates, there was a grinding head-on crash near Warrensburg, Missouri. Six people died, including Ira and Anne. Charlie heard the news while he was doing a date in West Virginia, and he grimly began making his way back to Nashville. It was a long, long drive.