At 80, the surviving member of the Country Music Hall of Fame's Louvin Brothers has as much get-up-and-go as a man less than half his age.

And these days, when he gets up to go it's usually to a recording studio or to a club to entertain fans with songs he and his brother Ira made famous 50 years ago. Louvin plays Sunday night at the Berkeley Cafe in Raleigh.

"I've got as much energy as anybody in my band, and more than most," Louvin says by phone from his home in Manchester, Tenn. "My oldest son works with me -- he's 54 -- and I've got 'em down to 27 years old. I don't have any trouble stayin' up with them. In fact, I'm usually ahead.

"I'm blessed with good health, and I've been given a chance to do it again, so to speak. If I don't do it, that means I'm lazy. I would never want to be called that."

It's not likely that anyone would call Louvin lazy. He and Ira began their professional career in 1942, and he's been at it ever since.

His self-titled CD, released last year on the Tompkins Square label, was nominated for a Grammy Award. It features guest appearances by such heavyweights as George Jones, Marty Stuart, Tom T. Hall and Elvis Costello. Raleigh's Tift Merritt adds her sweet voice to the Carter Family's "Grave on the Green Hillside." Mac McCaughan of Chapel Hill's Superchunk, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and other alternative country artists also contribute.

Two more CDs are in the works -- a gospel album and a secular one which he compares to the Louvin Brothers' classic LP, "Tragic Songs of Life." And when he's not in the studio, Louvin spends 75 to 80 days a year traveling the heartworn highway, driving from gig to gig singing new songs and reprising Louvin Brothers' hits for old and young audiences, alike.

Lazy? Well, no.

The Louvin Brothers enjoyed their peak popularity in 1955 and '56, at the dawn of rock and roll. With Charlie on guitar and Ira on mandolin, and their blended high harmonies, the Louvins were a link between the brother duet acts of the 1930s and Everly Brothers rock. Many of their original songs have become standards, among them, "When I Stop Dreaming," "Cash on the Barrelhead," "The Great Atomic Power" and "The Christian Life."

Country-rock legend Gram Parsons introduced Louvin songs to rock audiences in the '60s and '70s, recording several as duets with Emmylou Harris. Harris, in turn, expanded the Louvins' influence with her top-10 version of "If I Could Only Win Your Love," from her 1975 debut album, "Pieces of the Sky."

Louvin is pleased that the songs have endured.

"I'm often asked, 'When you and your brother were recording these songs, did you think they'd still be viable 50 years down the road?' My answer is, absolutely not. We was just trying to make a living. That's all that was on our minds."

Despite their popularity, or perhaps because of it, personal tensions fueled by Ira's struggles with alcoholism brought an end to the act in 1963. Charlie and Ira continued performing as solo acts. Ira died two years later in a car wreck while returning home from a gig in Kansas City. Charlie pays tribute to his brother with "Ira," a song he includes on the Grammy-nominated CD.

Charlie looks back fondly on his years with Ira. It was a time, he says, when country music was more about harmony than volume.

"Needless to say, I enjoyed the Louvin Brothers years. I'm probably the biggest lover of harmony that ever lived. Any song that's worth singing is worth having harmony on it, or it ain't no good anyway.

"Too many people today are recording rock and roll and calling it country. And the disc jockeys are going right along with them because they'd rather play a crossover tune than a genuine country song. They think we're a little dry, but there's still a lot of people out there that likes country. We try to do that."

Like the late Johnny Cash's final CDs on the American Recordings label, Tompkins Square has opened a new and younger audience for Charlie Louvin. It's an audience he enjoys playing for, and one that gives him the respect that the living legend deserves.

"We're playing to a lot of young people," he says. "They're more enthused with the music than the older people showed. The older people enjoyed it, but the enthusiasm wasn't much. For some reason, when you get old it takes more to entertain you. You've been there, done that and seen that. Older folks are harder to work than younger people are."

More than 65 years after the Louvin Brothers set out on a journey that would take them into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Charlie is going strong with a new label, new album and new generation of fans. So how long does the great harmonizer plan to continue working at what most would agree is a young man's game?

"As long as I can sing on key," he says. "If I get to where I can't sing on key, if I don't know it, I hope that somebody -- I'm sure my boy will tell me. Then I'll retire."