The Carter Family

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Anna Hunt Graves

One of the founding acts of modern country music, the Carter Family began recording in the late 1920s and developed a national following that lasted throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. Among the first stars of hillbilly music, as country was labeled during that era, they created popular versions of traditional folk songs, influencing countless future country and folk artists. Their material included classic songs such as "Wabash Cannonball," and the melodies of their songs were borrowed by other composers--among them Woody Guthrie, who used one of their tunes as the musical basis for "This Land Is Your Land." The group was known for their vocal harmonies, in addition to Maybelle Carter's (1909-1978) innovative guitar technique, in which she used her thumb to pluck out a melody on the bass strings while using her fingers to strum a rhythm accompaniment on the treble strings. Referred to as the "Carter scratch," this unique style of playing transformed the role of the guitar in traditional music ensembles by making it the lead instrument. While the original Carter Family ceased performing and recording in 1943, Maybelle continued her career for several decades, first in a group with her daughters, and later as a solo artist.

Alvin Pleasant (A.P.) Delaney Carter (1891-1960) was a carpenter in his early twenties when he married sixteen-year-old Sara Dougherty (1899-1979) in 1915. The couple lived near Clinch Mountain, in the tiny community of Maces Spring, Virginia, where they provided musical entertainment at a variety of local social gatherings. Sara led the singing with her resonant alto and strummed an autoharp or guitar, while A.P. sang bass. They were occasionally joined in these performances by some of their relatives, including Sara's cousin Maybelle Addington, a talented teenage guitarist and singer who married A.P.'s brother Ezra in 1926. The following year, this trio traveled to Bristol, Tennessee, where a New York talent scout for the RCA Victor label named Ralph Peer was auditioning and recording new artists. On August 1 and 2, the Carters recorded six songs, and a few days later an unknown singer named Jimmie Rodgers also made his first recordings. The Bristol sessions were later recognized as the beginning of the modern country music industry, which grew as the result of the commercial success of these two hillbilly acts and the tremendous effect they had on the artists who followed them.

As sales of the Carters' first recordings increased, Peer made arrangements for a second session that took place in Camden, New Jersey, in the spring of 1928. There the group recorded several songs that became country music standards, such as "Keep on the Sunny Side," which later became their theme, and "Wildwood Flower." As their popularity increased, the Carter Family began touring regularly and continued recording. To sustain their popularity, A.P. sought to supplement their repertoire of rural folk songs with material he gathered on song-hunting trips. On some of these journeys, he was joined by Lesley Riddle, an African-American blues guitarist who may have also influenced Maybelle's innovative guitar style. When the Carter Family recorded songs discovered by A.P., he usually received credit for the arrangement, a common practice that allowed performers to receive publishing royalties for songs they did not actually write. By the time they disbanded in 1943, the Carters had recorded over 300 songs. While some were original compositions, many recordings were derived from the songbooks and sheet music A.P. collected, or traditional oral sources, or in some instances a combination of both. Since many of these folk songs had never been recorded, the versions popularized by the Carter Family served as invaluable documents for music historians and hillbilly enthusiasts alike.

Sara and A.P. were separated in 1933 and divorced six years later, although they maintained a professional relationship for ten years after the separation. Toward the end of the 1930s, she married A.P.'s first cousin, Coy Bayes, and they moved to California. While performing on Texas border radio stations during this period, the Carter Family sometimes included Maybelle's three daughters, Helen, June, and Anita, as well as Sara and A.P.'s children, Gladys, Jeanette, and Joe. After the breakup of the original Carter Family, Sara and A.P. retired from music, while Maybelle started a new group with her daughters. Calling themselves the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle, they performed during the 1940s and joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1950. Within a few years, the sisters parted ways to pursue different interests. June married country artist Carl Smith in 1952, and a few years later gave birth to Rebecca Carlene Smith (who began performing in the late 1970s as Carlene Carter and was married to British rocker Nick Lowe). In 1961, the year after A.P. Carter's death, June began singing with Johnny Cash, and the two were married in 1968, after she helped him overcome his drug addiction.

Anita Carter also achieved success as a performer in the 1960s, as did Mother Maybelle, who developed a new following as the result of the folk music revival that began on college campuses toward the end of the 1950s. The autoharp became her primary instrument, and she impressed audiences with her ability to pick out melodies on the strings rather than simply strumming chords. Maybelle performed at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, and she and Sara reunited a few years later to record an album. In the late 1960s, Maybelle toured with Johnny and June Carter Cash, and she was one of several influential older country and bluegrass artists featured on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's 1972 double album Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Two years after failing health caused her to stop performing, Maybelle died in October of 1978, three months before Sara's death. The original Carter Family was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970, and they are often called "The First Family of Country Music." In the mid-1990s, Rounder Records released eight compact discs containing all of their RCA Victor recordings. Seventy years after the Carter Family first began recording, their timeless music continued to interest and influence listeners.