The Carter Family: 1926 - 1943

It took three regular country folk from a remote Appalachian valley to become the most influential group in country music. The Carter Family popularized traditional rural music by emphasizing vocals over instrumentation. Just as essential was Maybelle’s innovative “Carter picking” technique which inspired generations of folk and bluegrass guitarists. The Carter songbook was fashioned from a wellspring of folk forms like southern gospel and mountain ballads and conveyed life’s themes of love, loss, and suffering to a mass audience. A.P. Carter’s extraordinary efforts at song collecting helped salvage a large chunk of folk music antiquity, much in the way eccentric curator Harry Smith did years later. Many Carter Family songs remain anthems in country music to this day.

Alvin Pleasant Carter, born April 15, 1891, had an ear and voice for music as a young man singing in a church quartet in Poor Valley, South Virginia. He was also influenced by his uncle Flanders, who organized shape-note singing schools throughout neighboring counties. A.P. made his living from farming and selling fruit trees door to door, yet music was in his head and heart. He met Sara Dougherty, born July 21, 1898, while on a tree selling venture in the next valley, captivated as she sang “Engine 143,” accompanied by autoharp on her front porch. They were married in the summer of 1915.

At first the couple sang at church singing conventions and local parties for fun and a little money. Occasionally Sara’s cousin Maybelle Addington, born May 10, 1909, would visit and sit in on songs, supplementing their voices with flowing, rhythmic guitar. Maybelle eventually fell for A.P.’s brother, Eck Carter, and the two were married, legitimately bringing her into the Carter fold. Music had been in all their lineages, passed down through generations as fiddle airs and traditional Anglo-Irish ballads from the old country. Somehow A.P. got the notion to make more out of this music than just upholding tradition.

In 1926 he was on his sales route in a nearby town when he learned of a Brunswick recording scout searching for “hillbilly” musicians. He convinced Sara to join him for an audition. The scout was impressed with their singing abilities, but only seemed  interested in signing A.P. as a solo dance fiddler. A.P. declined, but the seed had been planted. He had the foresight to recognize the value of all the old songs their families had been polishing for years. That and the natural talents that Sara and Maybelle exhibited while playing them.

A year later they were lured by an ad in a Bristol, Tennessee newspaper to record new talent with Victor Records. The trio sang six songs into a recording machine manned by A&R rep Ralph Peer, collected $300 for their efforts and returned home. Months later Victor released a double-sided 78 with “Poor Orphan Child/Wandering Boy.” In the spring of 1928 when two more singles were released and sold abundantly Peer sent word for the Carters to come to a Camden, New Jersey recording studio.

The Carters were now signed to a contract with Victor that included $50 per recording plus royalties. Ralph Peer made it clear that as long as they kept bringing new material to the studio the future would remain lucrative. Over the next seven years the Carters embarked on a vast recording spree, influencing American popular music and rising to fame in the process. The historic Camden sessions alone captured some of their most memorable songs including “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone,” “Little Darlin Pal of Mine,” “John Hardy Was a Desperate Little Man,” “Single Girl, Married Girl,“ “Keep on the Sunny Side,“ and “Wildwood Flower.” It was only the beginning.

They had harnessed a sound of tight, one-mike harmonies that put voices ahead of the more common folk instrumentals of the period. Sara’s forlorn Appalachian-style vocals cut to the core, evoking themes of rural simplicity and their hardships while A.P.’s ghostly bass harmonies faded in and out from behind. The Carters’ instrumental ace in the hole was Maybelle, who was proving to be an adventurous and innovative guitarist. She had invented her own “scratch” picking technique of thumb-hooked bass string melodies and delicate treble string rhythms. Maybelle single-handedly popularized the guitar in folk music, even sweetening some tunes with Hawaiian and slide guitar styles.

As their audience kept growing so did the demand for more songs. A.P. incessantly wandered the valleys and neighboring counties in search of new “old” songs. Locals would inform him if they heard someone might have a song he could collect. They included a treasure trove of old and near-forgotten hymns, parlor songs, spirituals, and ballads that people relayed to him from memory or on an instrument. A.P. would return from his travels with scraps of handwritten lyrics which he’d then rewrite and arrange while Sara and Maybelle mapped out melodies and instrument parts. A.P. was eventually credited as composer of nearly three hundred songs though his true accomplishment was collecting and saving these musical relics for posterity.

In 1931, as the Depression leaned heavily on the recording industry and people’s pocketbooks, the Carters began to feel the pressure. Royalties and attendance to live “entertainments” were down. A.P. and Sara’s marriage also began to disintegrate between his frequent music hunting trips and Sara’s disenchantment with entertaining the masses. The couple eventually divorced in 1936, but kept their musical relationship intact. They continued generating songs and, in a new record deal with Ralph Peer’s divergent company, ARC Records, re-recorded many of their original sides in 1935. A previously unreleased song called “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” became one of their most popular songs ever.

The Carter Family’s popularity was magnified considerably once again in a radio deal with a Texas/Mexico border station called XERA. With its five-hundred-thousand watt transmission power, The Carters’ live performances and transcripts were beamed to every nook and cranny of the U.S. and beyond from 1938 to the early 1940s. The original Carter Family continued to make music until March of 1943 when they called it a day, devoid of any fanfare. Sara moved to California, A.P. back to Poor Valley, and Maybelle started a singing group with her three daughters.  By Tim Kirker

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