1956 Top Ten: I Take the Chance (#3)

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No, I wasn’t born in 1956. The great thing about art is that you don’t have to be around when it was created to appreciate it. My niece is a huge Shakespeare fan, for instance. So it’s nothing to love a song that’s 70 years old now. Here’s today’s song, also country (Linda? NO!!!!!!!) and also from my 100 favorites list. #3: I Take the Chance - the Browns I’ve mentioned this a lot, but I find it absolutely hilarious. There’s a book called Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy, interviewing songwriters about classic country songs. They actually asked Charlie Louvin about this one????!!! “My brother wrote that one,” Louvin replied. “I guess he liked another woman more than his wife at the time.” DUH! Yeah, Ira Louvin had problems. They’ve talked about making a biopic about the Louvin Brothers for years, but they can’t find anyone to match Ira’s voice…and who wants to see a soft core porn film with country music?! Ira was married four times, and had lots of girlfriends on the side. (His daughter relatively recently discovered that she had a half-sister thanks to Ira’s “other activities.”) Robbie Fulks and Linda Gail Lewis (Jerry Lee’s sister) did a duet album a few years ago. One of the songs on the album was called “I Just Lived a Country Song.” Yeah, that was Ira Louvin. The Louvins never recorded this, but Jim Ed Brown and his sisters did. I don’t know what this would sound like with two harmonies instead of three, but I know that the Browns’ version is darn near perfect. I Take the Chance Written by Ira and Charlie Louvin Recorded by the Browns Released as a single, 1956 I know it’s wrong: