Systems

Cl assi c

Standing Grandpa Jones unknown Wanda Jackson Eddie Hill seated HankThompson Stoney Cooper the Everly Brothers Hank Snow Merle Travis Courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

Cl a ssi cLegends of

Country Music

Charles K Wolfe

routledge bull new york bull london

Published in 2001 byRoutledge29 West 35th StreetNew York NY 10001

Published in Great Britain byRoutledge11 New Fetter LaneLondon EC4P 4EE

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2002

Copyright copy 2001 by Charles K Wolfe

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in anyform or by any electronic mechanical or other means now known or hereafter inventedincluding photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolfe Charles KClassic country legends of country music Charles K Wolfe

p cm mdashIncludes indexISBN 0ndash415ndash92826ndash5 mdash ISBN 0ndash415ndash92827ndash3 (pbk)

1 Country musiciansmdashUnited StatesmdashBiography I Title

ML385 W64 20007816420922mdashdc21 00ndash044638[B]

ISBN 0-203-90025-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-90029-4 (Glassbook Format)

(Print Edition)

Introduction vii

i From the Hall of Fame 1

The Carter Family 2Roy Acuff 19Lefty Frizzell 27Grandpa Jones 33Pee Wee King 38Bill Monroe 44Hank Snow 50Kitty Wells 56

ii From the Victrola 63

Fiddlinrsquo John Carson 64Vernon Dalhart 70Riley Puckett 76Charlie Poole 82The Georgia Yellow Hammers 85Darby and Tarlton 89

iii From the Airwaves 93

Lew Childre 94The Blue Sky Boys 97Brownrsquos Ferry Four 103Cousin Emmy 106The Monroe Brothers 109Wayne Raney 114Karl and Harty 117Bradley Kincaid 125

v

Contents

iv From the Shadows Unsung Heroes 129

Tommy Magness 130Arthur Q Smith 143Zeke and Zeb Turner 146Johnny Barfield 152The Rouse Brothers 155Seven Foot Dilly 165The Jordanaires 175DeFord Bailey 178Emmett Miller 182Tommy Jackson 185Jimmy Riddle 188

v From the Stage Classic Country 193

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby 194The Delmore Brothers 197Don Gibson 203The Louvin Brothers 215The Statler Brothers 221Martha Carson 236The Carlisles 239Albert E Brumley 243Stringbean 247

vi From the West 257

Girls of the Golden West 258Billie Maxwell 261Red River Dave 265Skeets McDonald 268

vii New Fogies 273

Hazel and Alice 274Doc Watson 279Roy Harper 285The Freight Hoppers 294

Acknowledgments 300

Index 301

vi Contents

vii

In an age when country music seems to be shooting off in a dozen dif-ferent directions it is important to remind ourselves that there was onceand still is a broad mainstream that genuinely defined the genre It wasnot called ldquopower countryrdquo or ldquoalt countryrdquo or ldquoretro countryrdquo or ldquocoun-try rockrdquo or ldquocowboy countryrdquo but just ldquocountryrdquo It was the home of alarge number of performers who shared a range of values and beliefsabout the music and who shared a common body of tradition and his-tory This great unifying nourishing stream runs through the history ofcountry music from the pioneer Appalachian harmonies of the OriginalCarter Family through the varied vocal styles of Roy Acuff Bill MonroeGrandpa Jones Kitty Wells Martha Carson the Statler Brothers anddozens of others Some have taken to calling this broad mainstream tra-dition ldquoClassic Countryrdquo in the same manner that we speak of ldquoclassicrdquorock or ldquoclassicrdquo jazz This book is a collection of some fifty profiles ofmusicians past and present who were part of this great stream

Though the subjects seen here range from pioneers of the 1920smdashthe first generation of professional country musiciansmdashto stars of thepresent they all have certain things in common First and foremost isthat each artist has serious ties to country musicrsquos past and to the coun-try music tradition It is true that most of these stars have created theirown distinct style and image and this has made them unique and wor-thy of interest but most have accomplished this by building on olderearlier traditions And many of them are willing and even anxious to payhomage to their teachers Roy Acuff could not get out of his head thesound of the old mountain ballad singer in eastern Tennessee LeftyFrizzell stuck his head inside the old Victrola to try to better hear thearchetypal recordings of Jimmie Rodgers fiddler Tommy Magness wasobsessed with the old fiddle tune he learned growing up in the northGeorgia hills that people later came to call ldquoBlack Mountain Ragrdquo Bill

Introduct ion

Monroe never missed a chance to pay homage to Arnold Schultz theblack guitar player who introduced him to the blues the LouvinBrothers often returned to their native Sand Mountain to sing the oldSacred Harp songs at their country church These musicians all felt con-nected to some earlier music and in some special way felt that they werea part of something And for better or worse they had to deal with it

Another characteristic most of these musicians have in common is awillingness to talk seriously about their work and their influences In anage of sound bites spin control publicists and superficial radio inter-views it is becoming rare to find an artist who is willing to sit down one-on-one and talk at length about his or her career These profilesgenerally have been based on such personal interviews in the case ofolder artists who have long since passed an attempt has been made tospeak directly with their close relatives and friends or to find taped inter-views in archives This personal aspect is what makes these profiles differ-ent from an encyclopedia entry or a formal history I have always beenconvinced that a good anecdote or an insightful quotation can tell us asmuch about a performer as pages of discography or lists of awards

Though we have in recent years lost a number of key artists in thisClassic Country mainstream the tradition is by no means extinct oreven seriously threatened One can look at the work of modern starslike LeAnn Rimes Alan Jackson George Strait Vince Gill MartyStuart Steve Earle Asleep at the Wheel Bryan White Patty Lovelessand many others For these artists the past of Classic Country is no hol-low dusty museum where people tread quietly and stare at glass caseswith reverence but a vibrant pulsating nourishing force that infusestheir own work in manifold and surprising ways Though few of theartists profiled here have a record on the current Billboard charts theirinfluence continues to make itself felt in dozens of new records that domake the charts

Nor does this collection represent a complete roster of all the perform-ers in this genre for a variety of reasons I was not able to do interviewsand profiles with many that I had wanted to I did not get a chance totalk at length with George Jones or Merle Haggard or Minnie Pearl orEddy Arnold but these particular artists have found their own biogra-phers and collaborators I did not deal much with cowboy or westernswing music since that area had its own enthusiasts and experts But ingeneral there was no rational master plan guiding my writing of theseprofiles Some were targets of opportunity and the result of specificwriting assignments or record projects This should be considered as arepresentative collection rather than a comprehensive one

viii Introduction

The profiles themselves span a number of years but most of themdate from the decade of the 1990s and first appeared in a publicationof Country Music magazine devoted to vintage performers and songsThis bore the unwieldy title The Journal of the American Academy for thePreservation of Old-Time Country Music though it was often called simplyThe Journal Though its editor in chief was Country Music founder RussBarnard many of the day-to-day duties belonged to Helen Barnard andSenior Editor Rich Kienzle It was under their tutelage that many ofthese profiles were conceived and written all three editors gave me awide berth to write about whatever parts of Classic Country that Iwanted to and were generous in making room when an article ran a bitlong or took an unexpected direction Other articles appeared in jour-nals and periodicals now defunct the legendary English quarterly OldTime Music the short-lived tabloid Country Sounds and the lovinglycrafted Georgia publication about gospel music Precious Memories Ahandful of pieces appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited then as now the lead-ing chronicler of that protean field and a few others started life as linernotes to a record or CD set Some of the profiles have never appearedin print before and were written expressly for this volume

A depressing number of the artists included here have died since Idid my interviews and wrote the stories about them They include PeeWee King (d 2000) Hank Snow (d 1999) Grandpa Jones (d 1998)Bill Monroe (d 1996) Curly Fox (d 1995) Roy Acuff (d 1992) LewDeWitt (of the Statler Brothers) (d 1990) Bradley Kincaid (d 1989)Jimmie Riddle (d 1982) and DeFord Bailey (d 1982) In other casesmy subjects had been gone for years I never got to meet Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson Riley Puckett Lew Childre Vernon Dalhart Karl and HartyTommy Magness Seven Foot Dilly Arthur Q Smith Albert E Brumleyand others But I was able to talk to their friends and relatives and getsome sense of what kind of people they were some sense of personalityto flesh out the bare bones of discography and chronology

I have divided these profiles into seven sections The first comprisesprobably the best-known names here those who are in the CountryMusic Hall of Fame These are in every real sense legendary figureswhose careers have spanned generations and have established them-selves as seminal figures in the development of the music The secondcategory ldquoFrom the Victrolardquo celebrates the first generation of countryrecording stars from the 1920smdashnames that are familiar to most coun-try fans but that are lacking in any sense of identity The great age oflive country radio is reflected in section three ldquoFrom the AirwavesrdquoDuring the 1930s and 1940s virtually every country musician had toestablish himself or herself by doing live radio work (I have chronicled

ixIntroduction

one particular show from this era the Grand Ole Opry in my A Good-Natured Riot [Country Music FoundationVanderbilt University Press1999])

Next comes a series of tributes to ldquoUnsung Heroesrdquo figures whoplayed significant roles in the music but have been neglected orignored by the formal histories ldquoFrom the Stagerdquo chronicles the main-stream artists who found their best venue to be the live personal per-formance the touring show These were the old-time ldquoshowmenrdquo whosedynamic performances transcended any individual song or stylemdashStringbean duck-walking across the stage to get to the mike MarthaCarson whirling through the audience during a driving gospel song BillCarlisle leaping four feet straight up into the air behind a microphoneand telling an audience to ldquoShut uprdquo ldquoFrom the Westrdquo includes por-traits of our first genuine singing cowgirl Billie Maxwell as well as otherperformers in this style Finally there is a section devoted to modernacts who have a special affinity for the older styles ldquoNew Fogiesrdquo toremind us that this tradition remains in good hands

Charles K WolfeMurfreesboro TennesseeFebruary 2000

x Introduction

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Cl assi c

Standing Grandpa Jones unknown Wanda Jackson Eddie Hill seated HankThompson Stoney Cooper the Everly Brothers Hank Snow Merle Travis Courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

Cl a ssi cLegends of

Country Music

Charles K Wolfe

routledge bull new york bull london

Published in 2001 byRoutledge29 West 35th StreetNew York NY 10001

Published in Great Britain byRoutledge11 New Fetter LaneLondon EC4P 4EE

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2002

Copyright copy 2001 by Charles K Wolfe

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in anyform or by any electronic mechanical or other means now known or hereafter inventedincluding photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolfe Charles KClassic country legends of country music Charles K Wolfe

p cm mdashIncludes indexISBN 0ndash415ndash92826ndash5 mdash ISBN 0ndash415ndash92827ndash3 (pbk)

1 Country musiciansmdashUnited StatesmdashBiography I Title

ML385 W64 20007816420922mdashdc21 00ndash044638[B]

ISBN 0-203-90025-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-90029-4 (Glassbook Format)

(Print Edition)

Introduction vii

i From the Hall of Fame 1

The Carter Family 2Roy Acuff 19Lefty Frizzell 27Grandpa Jones 33Pee Wee King 38Bill Monroe 44Hank Snow 50Kitty Wells 56

ii From the Victrola 63

Fiddlinrsquo John Carson 64Vernon Dalhart 70Riley Puckett 76Charlie Poole 82The Georgia Yellow Hammers 85Darby and Tarlton 89

iii From the Airwaves 93

Lew Childre 94The Blue Sky Boys 97Brownrsquos Ferry Four 103Cousin Emmy 106The Monroe Brothers 109Wayne Raney 114Karl and Harty 117Bradley Kincaid 125

v

Contents

iv From the Shadows Unsung Heroes 129

Tommy Magness 130Arthur Q Smith 143Zeke and Zeb Turner 146Johnny Barfield 152The Rouse Brothers 155Seven Foot Dilly 165The Jordanaires 175DeFord Bailey 178Emmett Miller 182Tommy Jackson 185Jimmy Riddle 188

v From the Stage Classic Country 193

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby 194The Delmore Brothers 197Don Gibson 203The Louvin Brothers 215The Statler Brothers 221Martha Carson 236The Carlisles 239Albert E Brumley 243Stringbean 247

vi From the West 257

Girls of the Golden West 258Billie Maxwell 261Red River Dave 265Skeets McDonald 268

vii New Fogies 273

Hazel and Alice 274Doc Watson 279Roy Harper 285The Freight Hoppers 294

Acknowledgments 300

Index 301

vi Contents

vii

In an age when country music seems to be shooting off in a dozen dif-ferent directions it is important to remind ourselves that there was onceand still is a broad mainstream that genuinely defined the genre It wasnot called ldquopower countryrdquo or ldquoalt countryrdquo or ldquoretro countryrdquo or ldquocoun-try rockrdquo or ldquocowboy countryrdquo but just ldquocountryrdquo It was the home of alarge number of performers who shared a range of values and beliefsabout the music and who shared a common body of tradition and his-tory This great unifying nourishing stream runs through the history ofcountry music from the pioneer Appalachian harmonies of the OriginalCarter Family through the varied vocal styles of Roy Acuff Bill MonroeGrandpa Jones Kitty Wells Martha Carson the Statler Brothers anddozens of others Some have taken to calling this broad mainstream tra-dition ldquoClassic Countryrdquo in the same manner that we speak of ldquoclassicrdquorock or ldquoclassicrdquo jazz This book is a collection of some fifty profiles ofmusicians past and present who were part of this great stream

Though the subjects seen here range from pioneers of the 1920smdashthe first generation of professional country musiciansmdashto stars of thepresent they all have certain things in common First and foremost isthat each artist has serious ties to country musicrsquos past and to the coun-try music tradition It is true that most of these stars have created theirown distinct style and image and this has made them unique and wor-thy of interest but most have accomplished this by building on olderearlier traditions And many of them are willing and even anxious to payhomage to their teachers Roy Acuff could not get out of his head thesound of the old mountain ballad singer in eastern Tennessee LeftyFrizzell stuck his head inside the old Victrola to try to better hear thearchetypal recordings of Jimmie Rodgers fiddler Tommy Magness wasobsessed with the old fiddle tune he learned growing up in the northGeorgia hills that people later came to call ldquoBlack Mountain Ragrdquo Bill

Introduct ion

Monroe never missed a chance to pay homage to Arnold Schultz theblack guitar player who introduced him to the blues the LouvinBrothers often returned to their native Sand Mountain to sing the oldSacred Harp songs at their country church These musicians all felt con-nected to some earlier music and in some special way felt that they werea part of something And for better or worse they had to deal with it

Another characteristic most of these musicians have in common is awillingness to talk seriously about their work and their influences In anage of sound bites spin control publicists and superficial radio inter-views it is becoming rare to find an artist who is willing to sit down one-on-one and talk at length about his or her career These profilesgenerally have been based on such personal interviews in the case ofolder artists who have long since passed an attempt has been made tospeak directly with their close relatives and friends or to find taped inter-views in archives This personal aspect is what makes these profiles differ-ent from an encyclopedia entry or a formal history I have always beenconvinced that a good anecdote or an insightful quotation can tell us asmuch about a performer as pages of discography or lists of awards

Though we have in recent years lost a number of key artists in thisClassic Country mainstream the tradition is by no means extinct oreven seriously threatened One can look at the work of modern starslike LeAnn Rimes Alan Jackson George Strait Vince Gill MartyStuart Steve Earle Asleep at the Wheel Bryan White Patty Lovelessand many others For these artists the past of Classic Country is no hol-low dusty museum where people tread quietly and stare at glass caseswith reverence but a vibrant pulsating nourishing force that infusestheir own work in manifold and surprising ways Though few of theartists profiled here have a record on the current Billboard charts theirinfluence continues to make itself felt in dozens of new records that domake the charts

Nor does this collection represent a complete roster of all the perform-ers in this genre for a variety of reasons I was not able to do interviewsand profiles with many that I had wanted to I did not get a chance totalk at length with George Jones or Merle Haggard or Minnie Pearl orEddy Arnold but these particular artists have found their own biogra-phers and collaborators I did not deal much with cowboy or westernswing music since that area had its own enthusiasts and experts But ingeneral there was no rational master plan guiding my writing of theseprofiles Some were targets of opportunity and the result of specificwriting assignments or record projects This should be considered as arepresentative collection rather than a comprehensive one

viii Introduction

The profiles themselves span a number of years but most of themdate from the decade of the 1990s and first appeared in a publicationof Country Music magazine devoted to vintage performers and songsThis bore the unwieldy title The Journal of the American Academy for thePreservation of Old-Time Country Music though it was often called simplyThe Journal Though its editor in chief was Country Music founder RussBarnard many of the day-to-day duties belonged to Helen Barnard andSenior Editor Rich Kienzle It was under their tutelage that many ofthese profiles were conceived and written all three editors gave me awide berth to write about whatever parts of Classic Country that Iwanted to and were generous in making room when an article ran a bitlong or took an unexpected direction Other articles appeared in jour-nals and periodicals now defunct the legendary English quarterly OldTime Music the short-lived tabloid Country Sounds and the lovinglycrafted Georgia publication about gospel music Precious Memories Ahandful of pieces appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited then as now the lead-ing chronicler of that protean field and a few others started life as linernotes to a record or CD set Some of the profiles have never appearedin print before and were written expressly for this volume

A depressing number of the artists included here have died since Idid my interviews and wrote the stories about them They include PeeWee King (d 2000) Hank Snow (d 1999) Grandpa Jones (d 1998)Bill Monroe (d 1996) Curly Fox (d 1995) Roy Acuff (d 1992) LewDeWitt (of the Statler Brothers) (d 1990) Bradley Kincaid (d 1989)Jimmie Riddle (d 1982) and DeFord Bailey (d 1982) In other casesmy subjects had been gone for years I never got to meet Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson Riley Puckett Lew Childre Vernon Dalhart Karl and HartyTommy Magness Seven Foot Dilly Arthur Q Smith Albert E Brumleyand others But I was able to talk to their friends and relatives and getsome sense of what kind of people they were some sense of personalityto flesh out the bare bones of discography and chronology

I have divided these profiles into seven sections The first comprisesprobably the best-known names here those who are in the CountryMusic Hall of Fame These are in every real sense legendary figureswhose careers have spanned generations and have established them-selves as seminal figures in the development of the music The secondcategory ldquoFrom the Victrolardquo celebrates the first generation of countryrecording stars from the 1920smdashnames that are familiar to most coun-try fans but that are lacking in any sense of identity The great age oflive country radio is reflected in section three ldquoFrom the AirwavesrdquoDuring the 1930s and 1940s virtually every country musician had toestablish himself or herself by doing live radio work (I have chronicled

ixIntroduction

one particular show from this era the Grand Ole Opry in my A Good-Natured Riot [Country Music FoundationVanderbilt University Press1999])

Next comes a series of tributes to ldquoUnsung Heroesrdquo figures whoplayed significant roles in the music but have been neglected orignored by the formal histories ldquoFrom the Stagerdquo chronicles the main-stream artists who found their best venue to be the live personal per-formance the touring show These were the old-time ldquoshowmenrdquo whosedynamic performances transcended any individual song or stylemdashStringbean duck-walking across the stage to get to the mike MarthaCarson whirling through the audience during a driving gospel song BillCarlisle leaping four feet straight up into the air behind a microphoneand telling an audience to ldquoShut uprdquo ldquoFrom the Westrdquo includes por-traits of our first genuine singing cowgirl Billie Maxwell as well as otherperformers in this style Finally there is a section devoted to modernacts who have a special affinity for the older styles ldquoNew Fogiesrdquo toremind us that this tradition remains in good hands

Charles K WolfeMurfreesboro TennesseeFebruary 2000

x Introduction

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Standing Grandpa Jones unknown Wanda Jackson Eddie Hill seated HankThompson Stoney Cooper the Everly Brothers Hank Snow Merle Travis Courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

Cl a ssi cLegends of

Country Music

Charles K Wolfe

routledge bull new york bull london

Published in 2001 byRoutledge29 West 35th StreetNew York NY 10001

Published in Great Britain byRoutledge11 New Fetter LaneLondon EC4P 4EE

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2002

Copyright copy 2001 by Charles K Wolfe

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in anyform or by any electronic mechanical or other means now known or hereafter inventedincluding photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolfe Charles KClassic country legends of country music Charles K Wolfe

p cm mdashIncludes indexISBN 0ndash415ndash92826ndash5 mdash ISBN 0ndash415ndash92827ndash3 (pbk)

1 Country musiciansmdashUnited StatesmdashBiography I Title

ML385 W64 20007816420922mdashdc21 00ndash044638[B]

ISBN 0-203-90025-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-90029-4 (Glassbook Format)

(Print Edition)

Introduction vii

i From the Hall of Fame 1

The Carter Family 2Roy Acuff 19Lefty Frizzell 27Grandpa Jones 33Pee Wee King 38Bill Monroe 44Hank Snow 50Kitty Wells 56

ii From the Victrola 63

Fiddlinrsquo John Carson 64Vernon Dalhart 70Riley Puckett 76Charlie Poole 82The Georgia Yellow Hammers 85Darby and Tarlton 89

iii From the Airwaves 93

Lew Childre 94The Blue Sky Boys 97Brownrsquos Ferry Four 103Cousin Emmy 106The Monroe Brothers 109Wayne Raney 114Karl and Harty 117Bradley Kincaid 125

v

Contents

iv From the Shadows Unsung Heroes 129

Tommy Magness 130Arthur Q Smith 143Zeke and Zeb Turner 146Johnny Barfield 152The Rouse Brothers 155Seven Foot Dilly 165The Jordanaires 175DeFord Bailey 178Emmett Miller 182Tommy Jackson 185Jimmy Riddle 188

v From the Stage Classic Country 193

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby 194The Delmore Brothers 197Don Gibson 203The Louvin Brothers 215The Statler Brothers 221Martha Carson 236The Carlisles 239Albert E Brumley 243Stringbean 247

vi From the West 257

Girls of the Golden West 258Billie Maxwell 261Red River Dave 265Skeets McDonald 268

vii New Fogies 273

Hazel and Alice 274Doc Watson 279Roy Harper 285The Freight Hoppers 294

Acknowledgments 300

Index 301

vi Contents

vii

In an age when country music seems to be shooting off in a dozen dif-ferent directions it is important to remind ourselves that there was onceand still is a broad mainstream that genuinely defined the genre It wasnot called ldquopower countryrdquo or ldquoalt countryrdquo or ldquoretro countryrdquo or ldquocoun-try rockrdquo or ldquocowboy countryrdquo but just ldquocountryrdquo It was the home of alarge number of performers who shared a range of values and beliefsabout the music and who shared a common body of tradition and his-tory This great unifying nourishing stream runs through the history ofcountry music from the pioneer Appalachian harmonies of the OriginalCarter Family through the varied vocal styles of Roy Acuff Bill MonroeGrandpa Jones Kitty Wells Martha Carson the Statler Brothers anddozens of others Some have taken to calling this broad mainstream tra-dition ldquoClassic Countryrdquo in the same manner that we speak of ldquoclassicrdquorock or ldquoclassicrdquo jazz This book is a collection of some fifty profiles ofmusicians past and present who were part of this great stream

Though the subjects seen here range from pioneers of the 1920smdashthe first generation of professional country musiciansmdashto stars of thepresent they all have certain things in common First and foremost isthat each artist has serious ties to country musicrsquos past and to the coun-try music tradition It is true that most of these stars have created theirown distinct style and image and this has made them unique and wor-thy of interest but most have accomplished this by building on olderearlier traditions And many of them are willing and even anxious to payhomage to their teachers Roy Acuff could not get out of his head thesound of the old mountain ballad singer in eastern Tennessee LeftyFrizzell stuck his head inside the old Victrola to try to better hear thearchetypal recordings of Jimmie Rodgers fiddler Tommy Magness wasobsessed with the old fiddle tune he learned growing up in the northGeorgia hills that people later came to call ldquoBlack Mountain Ragrdquo Bill

Introduct ion

Monroe never missed a chance to pay homage to Arnold Schultz theblack guitar player who introduced him to the blues the LouvinBrothers often returned to their native Sand Mountain to sing the oldSacred Harp songs at their country church These musicians all felt con-nected to some earlier music and in some special way felt that they werea part of something And for better or worse they had to deal with it

Another characteristic most of these musicians have in common is awillingness to talk seriously about their work and their influences In anage of sound bites spin control publicists and superficial radio inter-views it is becoming rare to find an artist who is willing to sit down one-on-one and talk at length about his or her career These profilesgenerally have been based on such personal interviews in the case ofolder artists who have long since passed an attempt has been made tospeak directly with their close relatives and friends or to find taped inter-views in archives This personal aspect is what makes these profiles differ-ent from an encyclopedia entry or a formal history I have always beenconvinced that a good anecdote or an insightful quotation can tell us asmuch about a performer as pages of discography or lists of awards

Though we have in recent years lost a number of key artists in thisClassic Country mainstream the tradition is by no means extinct oreven seriously threatened One can look at the work of modern starslike LeAnn Rimes Alan Jackson George Strait Vince Gill MartyStuart Steve Earle Asleep at the Wheel Bryan White Patty Lovelessand many others For these artists the past of Classic Country is no hol-low dusty museum where people tread quietly and stare at glass caseswith reverence but a vibrant pulsating nourishing force that infusestheir own work in manifold and surprising ways Though few of theartists profiled here have a record on the current Billboard charts theirinfluence continues to make itself felt in dozens of new records that domake the charts

Nor does this collection represent a complete roster of all the perform-ers in this genre for a variety of reasons I was not able to do interviewsand profiles with many that I had wanted to I did not get a chance totalk at length with George Jones or Merle Haggard or Minnie Pearl orEddy Arnold but these particular artists have found their own biogra-phers and collaborators I did not deal much with cowboy or westernswing music since that area had its own enthusiasts and experts But ingeneral there was no rational master plan guiding my writing of theseprofiles Some were targets of opportunity and the result of specificwriting assignments or record projects This should be considered as arepresentative collection rather than a comprehensive one

viii Introduction

The profiles themselves span a number of years but most of themdate from the decade of the 1990s and first appeared in a publicationof Country Music magazine devoted to vintage performers and songsThis bore the unwieldy title The Journal of the American Academy for thePreservation of Old-Time Country Music though it was often called simplyThe Journal Though its editor in chief was Country Music founder RussBarnard many of the day-to-day duties belonged to Helen Barnard andSenior Editor Rich Kienzle It was under their tutelage that many ofthese profiles were conceived and written all three editors gave me awide berth to write about whatever parts of Classic Country that Iwanted to and were generous in making room when an article ran a bitlong or took an unexpected direction Other articles appeared in jour-nals and periodicals now defunct the legendary English quarterly OldTime Music the short-lived tabloid Country Sounds and the lovinglycrafted Georgia publication about gospel music Precious Memories Ahandful of pieces appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited then as now the lead-ing chronicler of that protean field and a few others started life as linernotes to a record or CD set Some of the profiles have never appearedin print before and were written expressly for this volume

A depressing number of the artists included here have died since Idid my interviews and wrote the stories about them They include PeeWee King (d 2000) Hank Snow (d 1999) Grandpa Jones (d 1998)Bill Monroe (d 1996) Curly Fox (d 1995) Roy Acuff (d 1992) LewDeWitt (of the Statler Brothers) (d 1990) Bradley Kincaid (d 1989)Jimmie Riddle (d 1982) and DeFord Bailey (d 1982) In other casesmy subjects had been gone for years I never got to meet Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson Riley Puckett Lew Childre Vernon Dalhart Karl and HartyTommy Magness Seven Foot Dilly Arthur Q Smith Albert E Brumleyand others But I was able to talk to their friends and relatives and getsome sense of what kind of people they were some sense of personalityto flesh out the bare bones of discography and chronology

I have divided these profiles into seven sections The first comprisesprobably the best-known names here those who are in the CountryMusic Hall of Fame These are in every real sense legendary figureswhose careers have spanned generations and have established them-selves as seminal figures in the development of the music The secondcategory ldquoFrom the Victrolardquo celebrates the first generation of countryrecording stars from the 1920smdashnames that are familiar to most coun-try fans but that are lacking in any sense of identity The great age oflive country radio is reflected in section three ldquoFrom the AirwavesrdquoDuring the 1930s and 1940s virtually every country musician had toestablish himself or herself by doing live radio work (I have chronicled

ixIntroduction

one particular show from this era the Grand Ole Opry in my A Good-Natured Riot [Country Music FoundationVanderbilt University Press1999])

Next comes a series of tributes to ldquoUnsung Heroesrdquo figures whoplayed significant roles in the music but have been neglected orignored by the formal histories ldquoFrom the Stagerdquo chronicles the main-stream artists who found their best venue to be the live personal per-formance the touring show These were the old-time ldquoshowmenrdquo whosedynamic performances transcended any individual song or stylemdashStringbean duck-walking across the stage to get to the mike MarthaCarson whirling through the audience during a driving gospel song BillCarlisle leaping four feet straight up into the air behind a microphoneand telling an audience to ldquoShut uprdquo ldquoFrom the Westrdquo includes por-traits of our first genuine singing cowgirl Billie Maxwell as well as otherperformers in this style Finally there is a section devoted to modernacts who have a special affinity for the older styles ldquoNew Fogiesrdquo toremind us that this tradition remains in good hands

Charles K WolfeMurfreesboro TennesseeFebruary 2000

x Introduction

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Cl a ssi cLegends of

Country Music

Charles K Wolfe

routledge bull new york bull london

Published in 2001 byRoutledge29 West 35th StreetNew York NY 10001

Published in Great Britain byRoutledge11 New Fetter LaneLondon EC4P 4EE

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2002

Copyright copy 2001 by Charles K Wolfe

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in anyform or by any electronic mechanical or other means now known or hereafter inventedincluding photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolfe Charles KClassic country legends of country music Charles K Wolfe

p cm mdashIncludes indexISBN 0ndash415ndash92826ndash5 mdash ISBN 0ndash415ndash92827ndash3 (pbk)

1 Country musiciansmdashUnited StatesmdashBiography I Title

ML385 W64 20007816420922mdashdc21 00ndash044638[B]

ISBN 0-203-90025-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-90029-4 (Glassbook Format)

(Print Edition)

Introduction vii

i From the Hall of Fame 1

The Carter Family 2Roy Acuff 19Lefty Frizzell 27Grandpa Jones 33Pee Wee King 38Bill Monroe 44Hank Snow 50Kitty Wells 56

ii From the Victrola 63

Fiddlinrsquo John Carson 64Vernon Dalhart 70Riley Puckett 76Charlie Poole 82The Georgia Yellow Hammers 85Darby and Tarlton 89

iii From the Airwaves 93

Lew Childre 94The Blue Sky Boys 97Brownrsquos Ferry Four 103Cousin Emmy 106The Monroe Brothers 109Wayne Raney 114Karl and Harty 117Bradley Kincaid 125

v

Contents

iv From the Shadows Unsung Heroes 129

Tommy Magness 130Arthur Q Smith 143Zeke and Zeb Turner 146Johnny Barfield 152The Rouse Brothers 155Seven Foot Dilly 165The Jordanaires 175DeFord Bailey 178Emmett Miller 182Tommy Jackson 185Jimmy Riddle 188

v From the Stage Classic Country 193

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby 194The Delmore Brothers 197Don Gibson 203The Louvin Brothers 215The Statler Brothers 221Martha Carson 236The Carlisles 239Albert E Brumley 243Stringbean 247

vi From the West 257

Girls of the Golden West 258Billie Maxwell 261Red River Dave 265Skeets McDonald 268

vii New Fogies 273

Hazel and Alice 274Doc Watson 279Roy Harper 285The Freight Hoppers 294

Acknowledgments 300

Index 301

vi Contents

vii

In an age when country music seems to be shooting off in a dozen dif-ferent directions it is important to remind ourselves that there was onceand still is a broad mainstream that genuinely defined the genre It wasnot called ldquopower countryrdquo or ldquoalt countryrdquo or ldquoretro countryrdquo or ldquocoun-try rockrdquo or ldquocowboy countryrdquo but just ldquocountryrdquo It was the home of alarge number of performers who shared a range of values and beliefsabout the music and who shared a common body of tradition and his-tory This great unifying nourishing stream runs through the history ofcountry music from the pioneer Appalachian harmonies of the OriginalCarter Family through the varied vocal styles of Roy Acuff Bill MonroeGrandpa Jones Kitty Wells Martha Carson the Statler Brothers anddozens of others Some have taken to calling this broad mainstream tra-dition ldquoClassic Countryrdquo in the same manner that we speak of ldquoclassicrdquorock or ldquoclassicrdquo jazz This book is a collection of some fifty profiles ofmusicians past and present who were part of this great stream

Though the subjects seen here range from pioneers of the 1920smdashthe first generation of professional country musiciansmdashto stars of thepresent they all have certain things in common First and foremost isthat each artist has serious ties to country musicrsquos past and to the coun-try music tradition It is true that most of these stars have created theirown distinct style and image and this has made them unique and wor-thy of interest but most have accomplished this by building on olderearlier traditions And many of them are willing and even anxious to payhomage to their teachers Roy Acuff could not get out of his head thesound of the old mountain ballad singer in eastern Tennessee LeftyFrizzell stuck his head inside the old Victrola to try to better hear thearchetypal recordings of Jimmie Rodgers fiddler Tommy Magness wasobsessed with the old fiddle tune he learned growing up in the northGeorgia hills that people later came to call ldquoBlack Mountain Ragrdquo Bill

Introduct ion

Monroe never missed a chance to pay homage to Arnold Schultz theblack guitar player who introduced him to the blues the LouvinBrothers often returned to their native Sand Mountain to sing the oldSacred Harp songs at their country church These musicians all felt con-nected to some earlier music and in some special way felt that they werea part of something And for better or worse they had to deal with it

Another characteristic most of these musicians have in common is awillingness to talk seriously about their work and their influences In anage of sound bites spin control publicists and superficial radio inter-views it is becoming rare to find an artist who is willing to sit down one-on-one and talk at length about his or her career These profilesgenerally have been based on such personal interviews in the case ofolder artists who have long since passed an attempt has been made tospeak directly with their close relatives and friends or to find taped inter-views in archives This personal aspect is what makes these profiles differ-ent from an encyclopedia entry or a formal history I have always beenconvinced that a good anecdote or an insightful quotation can tell us asmuch about a performer as pages of discography or lists of awards

Though we have in recent years lost a number of key artists in thisClassic Country mainstream the tradition is by no means extinct oreven seriously threatened One can look at the work of modern starslike LeAnn Rimes Alan Jackson George Strait Vince Gill MartyStuart Steve Earle Asleep at the Wheel Bryan White Patty Lovelessand many others For these artists the past of Classic Country is no hol-low dusty museum where people tread quietly and stare at glass caseswith reverence but a vibrant pulsating nourishing force that infusestheir own work in manifold and surprising ways Though few of theartists profiled here have a record on the current Billboard charts theirinfluence continues to make itself felt in dozens of new records that domake the charts

Nor does this collection represent a complete roster of all the perform-ers in this genre for a variety of reasons I was not able to do interviewsand profiles with many that I had wanted to I did not get a chance totalk at length with George Jones or Merle Haggard or Minnie Pearl orEddy Arnold but these particular artists have found their own biogra-phers and collaborators I did not deal much with cowboy or westernswing music since that area had its own enthusiasts and experts But ingeneral there was no rational master plan guiding my writing of theseprofiles Some were targets of opportunity and the result of specificwriting assignments or record projects This should be considered as arepresentative collection rather than a comprehensive one

viii Introduction

The profiles themselves span a number of years but most of themdate from the decade of the 1990s and first appeared in a publicationof Country Music magazine devoted to vintage performers and songsThis bore the unwieldy title The Journal of the American Academy for thePreservation of Old-Time Country Music though it was often called simplyThe Journal Though its editor in chief was Country Music founder RussBarnard many of the day-to-day duties belonged to Helen Barnard andSenior Editor Rich Kienzle It was under their tutelage that many ofthese profiles were conceived and written all three editors gave me awide berth to write about whatever parts of Classic Country that Iwanted to and were generous in making room when an article ran a bitlong or took an unexpected direction Other articles appeared in jour-nals and periodicals now defunct the legendary English quarterly OldTime Music the short-lived tabloid Country Sounds and the lovinglycrafted Georgia publication about gospel music Precious Memories Ahandful of pieces appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited then as now the lead-ing chronicler of that protean field and a few others started life as linernotes to a record or CD set Some of the profiles have never appearedin print before and were written expressly for this volume

A depressing number of the artists included here have died since Idid my interviews and wrote the stories about them They include PeeWee King (d 2000) Hank Snow (d 1999) Grandpa Jones (d 1998)Bill Monroe (d 1996) Curly Fox (d 1995) Roy Acuff (d 1992) LewDeWitt (of the Statler Brothers) (d 1990) Bradley Kincaid (d 1989)Jimmie Riddle (d 1982) and DeFord Bailey (d 1982) In other casesmy subjects had been gone for years I never got to meet Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson Riley Puckett Lew Childre Vernon Dalhart Karl and HartyTommy Magness Seven Foot Dilly Arthur Q Smith Albert E Brumleyand others But I was able to talk to their friends and relatives and getsome sense of what kind of people they were some sense of personalityto flesh out the bare bones of discography and chronology

I have divided these profiles into seven sections The first comprisesprobably the best-known names here those who are in the CountryMusic Hall of Fame These are in every real sense legendary figureswhose careers have spanned generations and have established them-selves as seminal figures in the development of the music The secondcategory ldquoFrom the Victrolardquo celebrates the first generation of countryrecording stars from the 1920smdashnames that are familiar to most coun-try fans but that are lacking in any sense of identity The great age oflive country radio is reflected in section three ldquoFrom the AirwavesrdquoDuring the 1930s and 1940s virtually every country musician had toestablish himself or herself by doing live radio work (I have chronicled

ixIntroduction

one particular show from this era the Grand Ole Opry in my A Good-Natured Riot [Country Music FoundationVanderbilt University Press1999])

Next comes a series of tributes to ldquoUnsung Heroesrdquo figures whoplayed significant roles in the music but have been neglected orignored by the formal histories ldquoFrom the Stagerdquo chronicles the main-stream artists who found their best venue to be the live personal per-formance the touring show These were the old-time ldquoshowmenrdquo whosedynamic performances transcended any individual song or stylemdashStringbean duck-walking across the stage to get to the mike MarthaCarson whirling through the audience during a driving gospel song BillCarlisle leaping four feet straight up into the air behind a microphoneand telling an audience to ldquoShut uprdquo ldquoFrom the Westrdquo includes por-traits of our first genuine singing cowgirl Billie Maxwell as well as otherperformers in this style Finally there is a section devoted to modernacts who have a special affinity for the older styles ldquoNew Fogiesrdquo toremind us that this tradition remains in good hands

Charles K WolfeMurfreesboro TennesseeFebruary 2000

x Introduction

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Published in 2001 byRoutledge29 West 35th StreetNew York NY 10001

Published in Great Britain byRoutledge11 New Fetter LaneLondon EC4P 4EE

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor amp Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor amp Francis e-Library 2002

Copyright copy 2001 by Charles K Wolfe

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in anyform or by any electronic mechanical or other means now known or hereafter inventedincluding photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolfe Charles KClassic country legends of country music Charles K Wolfe

p cm mdashIncludes indexISBN 0ndash415ndash92826ndash5 mdash ISBN 0ndash415ndash92827ndash3 (pbk)

1 Country musiciansmdashUnited StatesmdashBiography I Title

ML385 W64 20007816420922mdashdc21 00ndash044638[B]

ISBN 0-203-90025-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-90029-4 (Glassbook Format)

(Print Edition)

Introduction vii

i From the Hall of Fame 1

The Carter Family 2Roy Acuff 19Lefty Frizzell 27Grandpa Jones 33Pee Wee King 38Bill Monroe 44Hank Snow 50Kitty Wells 56

ii From the Victrola 63

Fiddlinrsquo John Carson 64Vernon Dalhart 70Riley Puckett 76Charlie Poole 82The Georgia Yellow Hammers 85Darby and Tarlton 89

iii From the Airwaves 93

Lew Childre 94The Blue Sky Boys 97Brownrsquos Ferry Four 103Cousin Emmy 106The Monroe Brothers 109Wayne Raney 114Karl and Harty 117Bradley Kincaid 125

v

Contents

iv From the Shadows Unsung Heroes 129

Tommy Magness 130Arthur Q Smith 143Zeke and Zeb Turner 146Johnny Barfield 152The Rouse Brothers 155Seven Foot Dilly 165The Jordanaires 175DeFord Bailey 178Emmett Miller 182Tommy Jackson 185Jimmy Riddle 188

v From the Stage Classic Country 193

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby 194The Delmore Brothers 197Don Gibson 203The Louvin Brothers 215The Statler Brothers 221Martha Carson 236The Carlisles 239Albert E Brumley 243Stringbean 247

vi From the West 257

Girls of the Golden West 258Billie Maxwell 261Red River Dave 265Skeets McDonald 268

vii New Fogies 273

Hazel and Alice 274Doc Watson 279Roy Harper 285The Freight Hoppers 294

Acknowledgments 300

Index 301

vi Contents

vii

In an age when country music seems to be shooting off in a dozen dif-ferent directions it is important to remind ourselves that there was onceand still is a broad mainstream that genuinely defined the genre It wasnot called ldquopower countryrdquo or ldquoalt countryrdquo or ldquoretro countryrdquo or ldquocoun-try rockrdquo or ldquocowboy countryrdquo but just ldquocountryrdquo It was the home of alarge number of performers who shared a range of values and beliefsabout the music and who shared a common body of tradition and his-tory This great unifying nourishing stream runs through the history ofcountry music from the pioneer Appalachian harmonies of the OriginalCarter Family through the varied vocal styles of Roy Acuff Bill MonroeGrandpa Jones Kitty Wells Martha Carson the Statler Brothers anddozens of others Some have taken to calling this broad mainstream tra-dition ldquoClassic Countryrdquo in the same manner that we speak of ldquoclassicrdquorock or ldquoclassicrdquo jazz This book is a collection of some fifty profiles ofmusicians past and present who were part of this great stream

Though the subjects seen here range from pioneers of the 1920smdashthe first generation of professional country musiciansmdashto stars of thepresent they all have certain things in common First and foremost isthat each artist has serious ties to country musicrsquos past and to the coun-try music tradition It is true that most of these stars have created theirown distinct style and image and this has made them unique and wor-thy of interest but most have accomplished this by building on olderearlier traditions And many of them are willing and even anxious to payhomage to their teachers Roy Acuff could not get out of his head thesound of the old mountain ballad singer in eastern Tennessee LeftyFrizzell stuck his head inside the old Victrola to try to better hear thearchetypal recordings of Jimmie Rodgers fiddler Tommy Magness wasobsessed with the old fiddle tune he learned growing up in the northGeorgia hills that people later came to call ldquoBlack Mountain Ragrdquo Bill

Introduct ion

Monroe never missed a chance to pay homage to Arnold Schultz theblack guitar player who introduced him to the blues the LouvinBrothers often returned to their native Sand Mountain to sing the oldSacred Harp songs at their country church These musicians all felt con-nected to some earlier music and in some special way felt that they werea part of something And for better or worse they had to deal with it

Another characteristic most of these musicians have in common is awillingness to talk seriously about their work and their influences In anage of sound bites spin control publicists and superficial radio inter-views it is becoming rare to find an artist who is willing to sit down one-on-one and talk at length about his or her career These profilesgenerally have been based on such personal interviews in the case ofolder artists who have long since passed an attempt has been made tospeak directly with their close relatives and friends or to find taped inter-views in archives This personal aspect is what makes these profiles differ-ent from an encyclopedia entry or a formal history I have always beenconvinced that a good anecdote or an insightful quotation can tell us asmuch about a performer as pages of discography or lists of awards

Though we have in recent years lost a number of key artists in thisClassic Country mainstream the tradition is by no means extinct oreven seriously threatened One can look at the work of modern starslike LeAnn Rimes Alan Jackson George Strait Vince Gill MartyStuart Steve Earle Asleep at the Wheel Bryan White Patty Lovelessand many others For these artists the past of Classic Country is no hol-low dusty museum where people tread quietly and stare at glass caseswith reverence but a vibrant pulsating nourishing force that infusestheir own work in manifold and surprising ways Though few of theartists profiled here have a record on the current Billboard charts theirinfluence continues to make itself felt in dozens of new records that domake the charts

Nor does this collection represent a complete roster of all the perform-ers in this genre for a variety of reasons I was not able to do interviewsand profiles with many that I had wanted to I did not get a chance totalk at length with George Jones or Merle Haggard or Minnie Pearl orEddy Arnold but these particular artists have found their own biogra-phers and collaborators I did not deal much with cowboy or westernswing music since that area had its own enthusiasts and experts But ingeneral there was no rational master plan guiding my writing of theseprofiles Some were targets of opportunity and the result of specificwriting assignments or record projects This should be considered as arepresentative collection rather than a comprehensive one

viii Introduction

The profiles themselves span a number of years but most of themdate from the decade of the 1990s and first appeared in a publicationof Country Music magazine devoted to vintage performers and songsThis bore the unwieldy title The Journal of the American Academy for thePreservation of Old-Time Country Music though it was often called simplyThe Journal Though its editor in chief was Country Music founder RussBarnard many of the day-to-day duties belonged to Helen Barnard andSenior Editor Rich Kienzle It was under their tutelage that many ofthese profiles were conceived and written all three editors gave me awide berth to write about whatever parts of Classic Country that Iwanted to and were generous in making room when an article ran a bitlong or took an unexpected direction Other articles appeared in jour-nals and periodicals now defunct the legendary English quarterly OldTime Music the short-lived tabloid Country Sounds and the lovinglycrafted Georgia publication about gospel music Precious Memories Ahandful of pieces appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited then as now the lead-ing chronicler of that protean field and a few others started life as linernotes to a record or CD set Some of the profiles have never appearedin print before and were written expressly for this volume

A depressing number of the artists included here have died since Idid my interviews and wrote the stories about them They include PeeWee King (d 2000) Hank Snow (d 1999) Grandpa Jones (d 1998)Bill Monroe (d 1996) Curly Fox (d 1995) Roy Acuff (d 1992) LewDeWitt (of the Statler Brothers) (d 1990) Bradley Kincaid (d 1989)Jimmie Riddle (d 1982) and DeFord Bailey (d 1982) In other casesmy subjects had been gone for years I never got to meet Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson Riley Puckett Lew Childre Vernon Dalhart Karl and HartyTommy Magness Seven Foot Dilly Arthur Q Smith Albert E Brumleyand others But I was able to talk to their friends and relatives and getsome sense of what kind of people they were some sense of personalityto flesh out the bare bones of discography and chronology

I have divided these profiles into seven sections The first comprisesprobably the best-known names here those who are in the CountryMusic Hall of Fame These are in every real sense legendary figureswhose careers have spanned generations and have established them-selves as seminal figures in the development of the music The secondcategory ldquoFrom the Victrolardquo celebrates the first generation of countryrecording stars from the 1920smdashnames that are familiar to most coun-try fans but that are lacking in any sense of identity The great age oflive country radio is reflected in section three ldquoFrom the AirwavesrdquoDuring the 1930s and 1940s virtually every country musician had toestablish himself or herself by doing live radio work (I have chronicled

ixIntroduction

one particular show from this era the Grand Ole Opry in my A Good-Natured Riot [Country Music FoundationVanderbilt University Press1999])

Next comes a series of tributes to ldquoUnsung Heroesrdquo figures whoplayed significant roles in the music but have been neglected orignored by the formal histories ldquoFrom the Stagerdquo chronicles the main-stream artists who found their best venue to be the live personal per-formance the touring show These were the old-time ldquoshowmenrdquo whosedynamic performances transcended any individual song or stylemdashStringbean duck-walking across the stage to get to the mike MarthaCarson whirling through the audience during a driving gospel song BillCarlisle leaping four feet straight up into the air behind a microphoneand telling an audience to ldquoShut uprdquo ldquoFrom the Westrdquo includes por-traits of our first genuine singing cowgirl Billie Maxwell as well as otherperformers in this style Finally there is a section devoted to modernacts who have a special affinity for the older styles ldquoNew Fogiesrdquo toremind us that this tradition remains in good hands

Charles K WolfeMurfreesboro TennesseeFebruary 2000

x Introduction

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Introduction vii

i From the Hall of Fame 1

The Carter Family 2Roy Acuff 19Lefty Frizzell 27Grandpa Jones 33Pee Wee King 38Bill Monroe 44Hank Snow 50Kitty Wells 56

ii From the Victrola 63

Fiddlinrsquo John Carson 64Vernon Dalhart 70Riley Puckett 76Charlie Poole 82The Georgia Yellow Hammers 85Darby and Tarlton 89

iii From the Airwaves 93

Lew Childre 94The Blue Sky Boys 97Brownrsquos Ferry Four 103Cousin Emmy 106The Monroe Brothers 109Wayne Raney 114Karl and Harty 117Bradley Kincaid 125

v

Contents

iv From the Shadows Unsung Heroes 129

Tommy Magness 130Arthur Q Smith 143Zeke and Zeb Turner 146Johnny Barfield 152The Rouse Brothers 155Seven Foot Dilly 165The Jordanaires 175DeFord Bailey 178Emmett Miller 182Tommy Jackson 185Jimmy Riddle 188

v From the Stage Classic Country 193

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby 194The Delmore Brothers 197Don Gibson 203The Louvin Brothers 215The Statler Brothers 221Martha Carson 236The Carlisles 239Albert E Brumley 243Stringbean 247

vi From the West 257

Girls of the Golden West 258Billie Maxwell 261Red River Dave 265Skeets McDonald 268

vii New Fogies 273

Hazel and Alice 274Doc Watson 279Roy Harper 285The Freight Hoppers 294

Acknowledgments 300

Index 301

vi Contents

vii

In an age when country music seems to be shooting off in a dozen dif-ferent directions it is important to remind ourselves that there was onceand still is a broad mainstream that genuinely defined the genre It wasnot called ldquopower countryrdquo or ldquoalt countryrdquo or ldquoretro countryrdquo or ldquocoun-try rockrdquo or ldquocowboy countryrdquo but just ldquocountryrdquo It was the home of alarge number of performers who shared a range of values and beliefsabout the music and who shared a common body of tradition and his-tory This great unifying nourishing stream runs through the history ofcountry music from the pioneer Appalachian harmonies of the OriginalCarter Family through the varied vocal styles of Roy Acuff Bill MonroeGrandpa Jones Kitty Wells Martha Carson the Statler Brothers anddozens of others Some have taken to calling this broad mainstream tra-dition ldquoClassic Countryrdquo in the same manner that we speak of ldquoclassicrdquorock or ldquoclassicrdquo jazz This book is a collection of some fifty profiles ofmusicians past and present who were part of this great stream

Though the subjects seen here range from pioneers of the 1920smdashthe first generation of professional country musiciansmdashto stars of thepresent they all have certain things in common First and foremost isthat each artist has serious ties to country musicrsquos past and to the coun-try music tradition It is true that most of these stars have created theirown distinct style and image and this has made them unique and wor-thy of interest but most have accomplished this by building on olderearlier traditions And many of them are willing and even anxious to payhomage to their teachers Roy Acuff could not get out of his head thesound of the old mountain ballad singer in eastern Tennessee LeftyFrizzell stuck his head inside the old Victrola to try to better hear thearchetypal recordings of Jimmie Rodgers fiddler Tommy Magness wasobsessed with the old fiddle tune he learned growing up in the northGeorgia hills that people later came to call ldquoBlack Mountain Ragrdquo Bill

Introduct ion

Monroe never missed a chance to pay homage to Arnold Schultz theblack guitar player who introduced him to the blues the LouvinBrothers often returned to their native Sand Mountain to sing the oldSacred Harp songs at their country church These musicians all felt con-nected to some earlier music and in some special way felt that they werea part of something And for better or worse they had to deal with it

Another characteristic most of these musicians have in common is awillingness to talk seriously about their work and their influences In anage of sound bites spin control publicists and superficial radio inter-views it is becoming rare to find an artist who is willing to sit down one-on-one and talk at length about his or her career These profilesgenerally have been based on such personal interviews in the case ofolder artists who have long since passed an attempt has been made tospeak directly with their close relatives and friends or to find taped inter-views in archives This personal aspect is what makes these profiles differ-ent from an encyclopedia entry or a formal history I have always beenconvinced that a good anecdote or an insightful quotation can tell us asmuch about a performer as pages of discography or lists of awards

Though we have in recent years lost a number of key artists in thisClassic Country mainstream the tradition is by no means extinct oreven seriously threatened One can look at the work of modern starslike LeAnn Rimes Alan Jackson George Strait Vince Gill MartyStuart Steve Earle Asleep at the Wheel Bryan White Patty Lovelessand many others For these artists the past of Classic Country is no hol-low dusty museum where people tread quietly and stare at glass caseswith reverence but a vibrant pulsating nourishing force that infusestheir own work in manifold and surprising ways Though few of theartists profiled here have a record on the current Billboard charts theirinfluence continues to make itself felt in dozens of new records that domake the charts

Nor does this collection represent a complete roster of all the perform-ers in this genre for a variety of reasons I was not able to do interviewsand profiles with many that I had wanted to I did not get a chance totalk at length with George Jones or Merle Haggard or Minnie Pearl orEddy Arnold but these particular artists have found their own biogra-phers and collaborators I did not deal much with cowboy or westernswing music since that area had its own enthusiasts and experts But ingeneral there was no rational master plan guiding my writing of theseprofiles Some were targets of opportunity and the result of specificwriting assignments or record projects This should be considered as arepresentative collection rather than a comprehensive one

viii Introduction

The profiles themselves span a number of years but most of themdate from the decade of the 1990s and first appeared in a publicationof Country Music magazine devoted to vintage performers and songsThis bore the unwieldy title The Journal of the American Academy for thePreservation of Old-Time Country Music though it was often called simplyThe Journal Though its editor in chief was Country Music founder RussBarnard many of the day-to-day duties belonged to Helen Barnard andSenior Editor Rich Kienzle It was under their tutelage that many ofthese profiles were conceived and written all three editors gave me awide berth to write about whatever parts of Classic Country that Iwanted to and were generous in making room when an article ran a bitlong or took an unexpected direction Other articles appeared in jour-nals and periodicals now defunct the legendary English quarterly OldTime Music the short-lived tabloid Country Sounds and the lovinglycrafted Georgia publication about gospel music Precious Memories Ahandful of pieces appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited then as now the lead-ing chronicler of that protean field and a few others started life as linernotes to a record or CD set Some of the profiles have never appearedin print before and were written expressly for this volume

A depressing number of the artists included here have died since Idid my interviews and wrote the stories about them They include PeeWee King (d 2000) Hank Snow (d 1999) Grandpa Jones (d 1998)Bill Monroe (d 1996) Curly Fox (d 1995) Roy Acuff (d 1992) LewDeWitt (of the Statler Brothers) (d 1990) Bradley Kincaid (d 1989)Jimmie Riddle (d 1982) and DeFord Bailey (d 1982) In other casesmy subjects had been gone for years I never got to meet Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson Riley Puckett Lew Childre Vernon Dalhart Karl and HartyTommy Magness Seven Foot Dilly Arthur Q Smith Albert E Brumleyand others But I was able to talk to their friends and relatives and getsome sense of what kind of people they were some sense of personalityto flesh out the bare bones of discography and chronology

I have divided these profiles into seven sections The first comprisesprobably the best-known names here those who are in the CountryMusic Hall of Fame These are in every real sense legendary figureswhose careers have spanned generations and have established them-selves as seminal figures in the development of the music The secondcategory ldquoFrom the Victrolardquo celebrates the first generation of countryrecording stars from the 1920smdashnames that are familiar to most coun-try fans but that are lacking in any sense of identity The great age oflive country radio is reflected in section three ldquoFrom the AirwavesrdquoDuring the 1930s and 1940s virtually every country musician had toestablish himself or herself by doing live radio work (I have chronicled

ixIntroduction

one particular show from this era the Grand Ole Opry in my A Good-Natured Riot [Country Music FoundationVanderbilt University Press1999])

Next comes a series of tributes to ldquoUnsung Heroesrdquo figures whoplayed significant roles in the music but have been neglected orignored by the formal histories ldquoFrom the Stagerdquo chronicles the main-stream artists who found their best venue to be the live personal per-formance the touring show These were the old-time ldquoshowmenrdquo whosedynamic performances transcended any individual song or stylemdashStringbean duck-walking across the stage to get to the mike MarthaCarson whirling through the audience during a driving gospel song BillCarlisle leaping four feet straight up into the air behind a microphoneand telling an audience to ldquoShut uprdquo ldquoFrom the Westrdquo includes por-traits of our first genuine singing cowgirl Billie Maxwell as well as otherperformers in this style Finally there is a section devoted to modernacts who have a special affinity for the older styles ldquoNew Fogiesrdquo toremind us that this tradition remains in good hands

Charles K WolfeMurfreesboro TennesseeFebruary 2000

x Introduction

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

iv From the Shadows Unsung Heroes 129

Tommy Magness 130Arthur Q Smith 143Zeke and Zeb Turner 146Johnny Barfield 152The Rouse Brothers 155Seven Foot Dilly 165The Jordanaires 175DeFord Bailey 178Emmett Miller 182Tommy Jackson 185Jimmy Riddle 188

v From the Stage Classic Country 193

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby 194The Delmore Brothers 197Don Gibson 203The Louvin Brothers 215The Statler Brothers 221Martha Carson 236The Carlisles 239Albert E Brumley 243Stringbean 247

vi From the West 257

Girls of the Golden West 258Billie Maxwell 261Red River Dave 265Skeets McDonald 268

vii New Fogies 273

Hazel and Alice 274Doc Watson 279Roy Harper 285The Freight Hoppers 294

Acknowledgments 300

Index 301

vi Contents

vii

In an age when country music seems to be shooting off in a dozen dif-ferent directions it is important to remind ourselves that there was onceand still is a broad mainstream that genuinely defined the genre It wasnot called ldquopower countryrdquo or ldquoalt countryrdquo or ldquoretro countryrdquo or ldquocoun-try rockrdquo or ldquocowboy countryrdquo but just ldquocountryrdquo It was the home of alarge number of performers who shared a range of values and beliefsabout the music and who shared a common body of tradition and his-tory This great unifying nourishing stream runs through the history ofcountry music from the pioneer Appalachian harmonies of the OriginalCarter Family through the varied vocal styles of Roy Acuff Bill MonroeGrandpa Jones Kitty Wells Martha Carson the Statler Brothers anddozens of others Some have taken to calling this broad mainstream tra-dition ldquoClassic Countryrdquo in the same manner that we speak of ldquoclassicrdquorock or ldquoclassicrdquo jazz This book is a collection of some fifty profiles ofmusicians past and present who were part of this great stream

Though the subjects seen here range from pioneers of the 1920smdashthe first generation of professional country musiciansmdashto stars of thepresent they all have certain things in common First and foremost isthat each artist has serious ties to country musicrsquos past and to the coun-try music tradition It is true that most of these stars have created theirown distinct style and image and this has made them unique and wor-thy of interest but most have accomplished this by building on olderearlier traditions And many of them are willing and even anxious to payhomage to their teachers Roy Acuff could not get out of his head thesound of the old mountain ballad singer in eastern Tennessee LeftyFrizzell stuck his head inside the old Victrola to try to better hear thearchetypal recordings of Jimmie Rodgers fiddler Tommy Magness wasobsessed with the old fiddle tune he learned growing up in the northGeorgia hills that people later came to call ldquoBlack Mountain Ragrdquo Bill

Introduct ion

Monroe never missed a chance to pay homage to Arnold Schultz theblack guitar player who introduced him to the blues the LouvinBrothers often returned to their native Sand Mountain to sing the oldSacred Harp songs at their country church These musicians all felt con-nected to some earlier music and in some special way felt that they werea part of something And for better or worse they had to deal with it

Another characteristic most of these musicians have in common is awillingness to talk seriously about their work and their influences In anage of sound bites spin control publicists and superficial radio inter-views it is becoming rare to find an artist who is willing to sit down one-on-one and talk at length about his or her career These profilesgenerally have been based on such personal interviews in the case ofolder artists who have long since passed an attempt has been made tospeak directly with their close relatives and friends or to find taped inter-views in archives This personal aspect is what makes these profiles differ-ent from an encyclopedia entry or a formal history I have always beenconvinced that a good anecdote or an insightful quotation can tell us asmuch about a performer as pages of discography or lists of awards

Though we have in recent years lost a number of key artists in thisClassic Country mainstream the tradition is by no means extinct oreven seriously threatened One can look at the work of modern starslike LeAnn Rimes Alan Jackson George Strait Vince Gill MartyStuart Steve Earle Asleep at the Wheel Bryan White Patty Lovelessand many others For these artists the past of Classic Country is no hol-low dusty museum where people tread quietly and stare at glass caseswith reverence but a vibrant pulsating nourishing force that infusestheir own work in manifold and surprising ways Though few of theartists profiled here have a record on the current Billboard charts theirinfluence continues to make itself felt in dozens of new records that domake the charts

Nor does this collection represent a complete roster of all the perform-ers in this genre for a variety of reasons I was not able to do interviewsand profiles with many that I had wanted to I did not get a chance totalk at length with George Jones or Merle Haggard or Minnie Pearl orEddy Arnold but these particular artists have found their own biogra-phers and collaborators I did not deal much with cowboy or westernswing music since that area had its own enthusiasts and experts But ingeneral there was no rational master plan guiding my writing of theseprofiles Some were targets of opportunity and the result of specificwriting assignments or record projects This should be considered as arepresentative collection rather than a comprehensive one

viii Introduction

The profiles themselves span a number of years but most of themdate from the decade of the 1990s and first appeared in a publicationof Country Music magazine devoted to vintage performers and songsThis bore the unwieldy title The Journal of the American Academy for thePreservation of Old-Time Country Music though it was often called simplyThe Journal Though its editor in chief was Country Music founder RussBarnard many of the day-to-day duties belonged to Helen Barnard andSenior Editor Rich Kienzle It was under their tutelage that many ofthese profiles were conceived and written all three editors gave me awide berth to write about whatever parts of Classic Country that Iwanted to and were generous in making room when an article ran a bitlong or took an unexpected direction Other articles appeared in jour-nals and periodicals now defunct the legendary English quarterly OldTime Music the short-lived tabloid Country Sounds and the lovinglycrafted Georgia publication about gospel music Precious Memories Ahandful of pieces appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited then as now the lead-ing chronicler of that protean field and a few others started life as linernotes to a record or CD set Some of the profiles have never appearedin print before and were written expressly for this volume

A depressing number of the artists included here have died since Idid my interviews and wrote the stories about them They include PeeWee King (d 2000) Hank Snow (d 1999) Grandpa Jones (d 1998)Bill Monroe (d 1996) Curly Fox (d 1995) Roy Acuff (d 1992) LewDeWitt (of the Statler Brothers) (d 1990) Bradley Kincaid (d 1989)Jimmie Riddle (d 1982) and DeFord Bailey (d 1982) In other casesmy subjects had been gone for years I never got to meet Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson Riley Puckett Lew Childre Vernon Dalhart Karl and HartyTommy Magness Seven Foot Dilly Arthur Q Smith Albert E Brumleyand others But I was able to talk to their friends and relatives and getsome sense of what kind of people they were some sense of personalityto flesh out the bare bones of discography and chronology

I have divided these profiles into seven sections The first comprisesprobably the best-known names here those who are in the CountryMusic Hall of Fame These are in every real sense legendary figureswhose careers have spanned generations and have established them-selves as seminal figures in the development of the music The secondcategory ldquoFrom the Victrolardquo celebrates the first generation of countryrecording stars from the 1920smdashnames that are familiar to most coun-try fans but that are lacking in any sense of identity The great age oflive country radio is reflected in section three ldquoFrom the AirwavesrdquoDuring the 1930s and 1940s virtually every country musician had toestablish himself or herself by doing live radio work (I have chronicled

ixIntroduction

one particular show from this era the Grand Ole Opry in my A Good-Natured Riot [Country Music FoundationVanderbilt University Press1999])

Next comes a series of tributes to ldquoUnsung Heroesrdquo figures whoplayed significant roles in the music but have been neglected orignored by the formal histories ldquoFrom the Stagerdquo chronicles the main-stream artists who found their best venue to be the live personal per-formance the touring show These were the old-time ldquoshowmenrdquo whosedynamic performances transcended any individual song or stylemdashStringbean duck-walking across the stage to get to the mike MarthaCarson whirling through the audience during a driving gospel song BillCarlisle leaping four feet straight up into the air behind a microphoneand telling an audience to ldquoShut uprdquo ldquoFrom the Westrdquo includes por-traits of our first genuine singing cowgirl Billie Maxwell as well as otherperformers in this style Finally there is a section devoted to modernacts who have a special affinity for the older styles ldquoNew Fogiesrdquo toremind us that this tradition remains in good hands

Charles K WolfeMurfreesboro TennesseeFebruary 2000

x Introduction

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

vii

In an age when country music seems to be shooting off in a dozen dif-ferent directions it is important to remind ourselves that there was onceand still is a broad mainstream that genuinely defined the genre It wasnot called ldquopower countryrdquo or ldquoalt countryrdquo or ldquoretro countryrdquo or ldquocoun-try rockrdquo or ldquocowboy countryrdquo but just ldquocountryrdquo It was the home of alarge number of performers who shared a range of values and beliefsabout the music and who shared a common body of tradition and his-tory This great unifying nourishing stream runs through the history ofcountry music from the pioneer Appalachian harmonies of the OriginalCarter Family through the varied vocal styles of Roy Acuff Bill MonroeGrandpa Jones Kitty Wells Martha Carson the Statler Brothers anddozens of others Some have taken to calling this broad mainstream tra-dition ldquoClassic Countryrdquo in the same manner that we speak of ldquoclassicrdquorock or ldquoclassicrdquo jazz This book is a collection of some fifty profiles ofmusicians past and present who were part of this great stream

Though the subjects seen here range from pioneers of the 1920smdashthe first generation of professional country musiciansmdashto stars of thepresent they all have certain things in common First and foremost isthat each artist has serious ties to country musicrsquos past and to the coun-try music tradition It is true that most of these stars have created theirown distinct style and image and this has made them unique and wor-thy of interest but most have accomplished this by building on olderearlier traditions And many of them are willing and even anxious to payhomage to their teachers Roy Acuff could not get out of his head thesound of the old mountain ballad singer in eastern Tennessee LeftyFrizzell stuck his head inside the old Victrola to try to better hear thearchetypal recordings of Jimmie Rodgers fiddler Tommy Magness wasobsessed with the old fiddle tune he learned growing up in the northGeorgia hills that people later came to call ldquoBlack Mountain Ragrdquo Bill

Introduct ion

Monroe never missed a chance to pay homage to Arnold Schultz theblack guitar player who introduced him to the blues the LouvinBrothers often returned to their native Sand Mountain to sing the oldSacred Harp songs at their country church These musicians all felt con-nected to some earlier music and in some special way felt that they werea part of something And for better or worse they had to deal with it

Another characteristic most of these musicians have in common is awillingness to talk seriously about their work and their influences In anage of sound bites spin control publicists and superficial radio inter-views it is becoming rare to find an artist who is willing to sit down one-on-one and talk at length about his or her career These profilesgenerally have been based on such personal interviews in the case ofolder artists who have long since passed an attempt has been made tospeak directly with their close relatives and friends or to find taped inter-views in archives This personal aspect is what makes these profiles differ-ent from an encyclopedia entry or a formal history I have always beenconvinced that a good anecdote or an insightful quotation can tell us asmuch about a performer as pages of discography or lists of awards

Though we have in recent years lost a number of key artists in thisClassic Country mainstream the tradition is by no means extinct oreven seriously threatened One can look at the work of modern starslike LeAnn Rimes Alan Jackson George Strait Vince Gill MartyStuart Steve Earle Asleep at the Wheel Bryan White Patty Lovelessand many others For these artists the past of Classic Country is no hol-low dusty museum where people tread quietly and stare at glass caseswith reverence but a vibrant pulsating nourishing force that infusestheir own work in manifold and surprising ways Though few of theartists profiled here have a record on the current Billboard charts theirinfluence continues to make itself felt in dozens of new records that domake the charts

Nor does this collection represent a complete roster of all the perform-ers in this genre for a variety of reasons I was not able to do interviewsand profiles with many that I had wanted to I did not get a chance totalk at length with George Jones or Merle Haggard or Minnie Pearl orEddy Arnold but these particular artists have found their own biogra-phers and collaborators I did not deal much with cowboy or westernswing music since that area had its own enthusiasts and experts But ingeneral there was no rational master plan guiding my writing of theseprofiles Some were targets of opportunity and the result of specificwriting assignments or record projects This should be considered as arepresentative collection rather than a comprehensive one

viii Introduction

The profiles themselves span a number of years but most of themdate from the decade of the 1990s and first appeared in a publicationof Country Music magazine devoted to vintage performers and songsThis bore the unwieldy title The Journal of the American Academy for thePreservation of Old-Time Country Music though it was often called simplyThe Journal Though its editor in chief was Country Music founder RussBarnard many of the day-to-day duties belonged to Helen Barnard andSenior Editor Rich Kienzle It was under their tutelage that many ofthese profiles were conceived and written all three editors gave me awide berth to write about whatever parts of Classic Country that Iwanted to and were generous in making room when an article ran a bitlong or took an unexpected direction Other articles appeared in jour-nals and periodicals now defunct the legendary English quarterly OldTime Music the short-lived tabloid Country Sounds and the lovinglycrafted Georgia publication about gospel music Precious Memories Ahandful of pieces appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited then as now the lead-ing chronicler of that protean field and a few others started life as linernotes to a record or CD set Some of the profiles have never appearedin print before and were written expressly for this volume

A depressing number of the artists included here have died since Idid my interviews and wrote the stories about them They include PeeWee King (d 2000) Hank Snow (d 1999) Grandpa Jones (d 1998)Bill Monroe (d 1996) Curly Fox (d 1995) Roy Acuff (d 1992) LewDeWitt (of the Statler Brothers) (d 1990) Bradley Kincaid (d 1989)Jimmie Riddle (d 1982) and DeFord Bailey (d 1982) In other casesmy subjects had been gone for years I never got to meet Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson Riley Puckett Lew Childre Vernon Dalhart Karl and HartyTommy Magness Seven Foot Dilly Arthur Q Smith Albert E Brumleyand others But I was able to talk to their friends and relatives and getsome sense of what kind of people they were some sense of personalityto flesh out the bare bones of discography and chronology

I have divided these profiles into seven sections The first comprisesprobably the best-known names here those who are in the CountryMusic Hall of Fame These are in every real sense legendary figureswhose careers have spanned generations and have established them-selves as seminal figures in the development of the music The secondcategory ldquoFrom the Victrolardquo celebrates the first generation of countryrecording stars from the 1920smdashnames that are familiar to most coun-try fans but that are lacking in any sense of identity The great age oflive country radio is reflected in section three ldquoFrom the AirwavesrdquoDuring the 1930s and 1940s virtually every country musician had toestablish himself or herself by doing live radio work (I have chronicled

ixIntroduction

one particular show from this era the Grand Ole Opry in my A Good-Natured Riot [Country Music FoundationVanderbilt University Press1999])

Next comes a series of tributes to ldquoUnsung Heroesrdquo figures whoplayed significant roles in the music but have been neglected orignored by the formal histories ldquoFrom the Stagerdquo chronicles the main-stream artists who found their best venue to be the live personal per-formance the touring show These were the old-time ldquoshowmenrdquo whosedynamic performances transcended any individual song or stylemdashStringbean duck-walking across the stage to get to the mike MarthaCarson whirling through the audience during a driving gospel song BillCarlisle leaping four feet straight up into the air behind a microphoneand telling an audience to ldquoShut uprdquo ldquoFrom the Westrdquo includes por-traits of our first genuine singing cowgirl Billie Maxwell as well as otherperformers in this style Finally there is a section devoted to modernacts who have a special affinity for the older styles ldquoNew Fogiesrdquo toremind us that this tradition remains in good hands

Charles K WolfeMurfreesboro TennesseeFebruary 2000

x Introduction

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Monroe never missed a chance to pay homage to Arnold Schultz theblack guitar player who introduced him to the blues the LouvinBrothers often returned to their native Sand Mountain to sing the oldSacred Harp songs at their country church These musicians all felt con-nected to some earlier music and in some special way felt that they werea part of something And for better or worse they had to deal with it

Another characteristic most of these musicians have in common is awillingness to talk seriously about their work and their influences In anage of sound bites spin control publicists and superficial radio inter-views it is becoming rare to find an artist who is willing to sit down one-on-one and talk at length about his or her career These profilesgenerally have been based on such personal interviews in the case ofolder artists who have long since passed an attempt has been made tospeak directly with their close relatives and friends or to find taped inter-views in archives This personal aspect is what makes these profiles differ-ent from an encyclopedia entry or a formal history I have always beenconvinced that a good anecdote or an insightful quotation can tell us asmuch about a performer as pages of discography or lists of awards

Though we have in recent years lost a number of key artists in thisClassic Country mainstream the tradition is by no means extinct oreven seriously threatened One can look at the work of modern starslike LeAnn Rimes Alan Jackson George Strait Vince Gill MartyStuart Steve Earle Asleep at the Wheel Bryan White Patty Lovelessand many others For these artists the past of Classic Country is no hol-low dusty museum where people tread quietly and stare at glass caseswith reverence but a vibrant pulsating nourishing force that infusestheir own work in manifold and surprising ways Though few of theartists profiled here have a record on the current Billboard charts theirinfluence continues to make itself felt in dozens of new records that domake the charts

Nor does this collection represent a complete roster of all the perform-ers in this genre for a variety of reasons I was not able to do interviewsand profiles with many that I had wanted to I did not get a chance totalk at length with George Jones or Merle Haggard or Minnie Pearl orEddy Arnold but these particular artists have found their own biogra-phers and collaborators I did not deal much with cowboy or westernswing music since that area had its own enthusiasts and experts But ingeneral there was no rational master plan guiding my writing of theseprofiles Some were targets of opportunity and the result of specificwriting assignments or record projects This should be considered as arepresentative collection rather than a comprehensive one

viii Introduction

The profiles themselves span a number of years but most of themdate from the decade of the 1990s and first appeared in a publicationof Country Music magazine devoted to vintage performers and songsThis bore the unwieldy title The Journal of the American Academy for thePreservation of Old-Time Country Music though it was often called simplyThe Journal Though its editor in chief was Country Music founder RussBarnard many of the day-to-day duties belonged to Helen Barnard andSenior Editor Rich Kienzle It was under their tutelage that many ofthese profiles were conceived and written all three editors gave me awide berth to write about whatever parts of Classic Country that Iwanted to and were generous in making room when an article ran a bitlong or took an unexpected direction Other articles appeared in jour-nals and periodicals now defunct the legendary English quarterly OldTime Music the short-lived tabloid Country Sounds and the lovinglycrafted Georgia publication about gospel music Precious Memories Ahandful of pieces appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited then as now the lead-ing chronicler of that protean field and a few others started life as linernotes to a record or CD set Some of the profiles have never appearedin print before and were written expressly for this volume

A depressing number of the artists included here have died since Idid my interviews and wrote the stories about them They include PeeWee King (d 2000) Hank Snow (d 1999) Grandpa Jones (d 1998)Bill Monroe (d 1996) Curly Fox (d 1995) Roy Acuff (d 1992) LewDeWitt (of the Statler Brothers) (d 1990) Bradley Kincaid (d 1989)Jimmie Riddle (d 1982) and DeFord Bailey (d 1982) In other casesmy subjects had been gone for years I never got to meet Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson Riley Puckett Lew Childre Vernon Dalhart Karl and HartyTommy Magness Seven Foot Dilly Arthur Q Smith Albert E Brumleyand others But I was able to talk to their friends and relatives and getsome sense of what kind of people they were some sense of personalityto flesh out the bare bones of discography and chronology

I have divided these profiles into seven sections The first comprisesprobably the best-known names here those who are in the CountryMusic Hall of Fame These are in every real sense legendary figureswhose careers have spanned generations and have established them-selves as seminal figures in the development of the music The secondcategory ldquoFrom the Victrolardquo celebrates the first generation of countryrecording stars from the 1920smdashnames that are familiar to most coun-try fans but that are lacking in any sense of identity The great age oflive country radio is reflected in section three ldquoFrom the AirwavesrdquoDuring the 1930s and 1940s virtually every country musician had toestablish himself or herself by doing live radio work (I have chronicled

ixIntroduction

one particular show from this era the Grand Ole Opry in my A Good-Natured Riot [Country Music FoundationVanderbilt University Press1999])

Next comes a series of tributes to ldquoUnsung Heroesrdquo figures whoplayed significant roles in the music but have been neglected orignored by the formal histories ldquoFrom the Stagerdquo chronicles the main-stream artists who found their best venue to be the live personal per-formance the touring show These were the old-time ldquoshowmenrdquo whosedynamic performances transcended any individual song or stylemdashStringbean duck-walking across the stage to get to the mike MarthaCarson whirling through the audience during a driving gospel song BillCarlisle leaping four feet straight up into the air behind a microphoneand telling an audience to ldquoShut uprdquo ldquoFrom the Westrdquo includes por-traits of our first genuine singing cowgirl Billie Maxwell as well as otherperformers in this style Finally there is a section devoted to modernacts who have a special affinity for the older styles ldquoNew Fogiesrdquo toremind us that this tradition remains in good hands

Charles K WolfeMurfreesboro TennesseeFebruary 2000

x Introduction

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

The profiles themselves span a number of years but most of themdate from the decade of the 1990s and first appeared in a publicationof Country Music magazine devoted to vintage performers and songsThis bore the unwieldy title The Journal of the American Academy for thePreservation of Old-Time Country Music though it was often called simplyThe Journal Though its editor in chief was Country Music founder RussBarnard many of the day-to-day duties belonged to Helen Barnard andSenior Editor Rich Kienzle It was under their tutelage that many ofthese profiles were conceived and written all three editors gave me awide berth to write about whatever parts of Classic Country that Iwanted to and were generous in making room when an article ran a bitlong or took an unexpected direction Other articles appeared in jour-nals and periodicals now defunct the legendary English quarterly OldTime Music the short-lived tabloid Country Sounds and the lovinglycrafted Georgia publication about gospel music Precious Memories Ahandful of pieces appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited then as now the lead-ing chronicler of that protean field and a few others started life as linernotes to a record or CD set Some of the profiles have never appearedin print before and were written expressly for this volume

A depressing number of the artists included here have died since Idid my interviews and wrote the stories about them They include PeeWee King (d 2000) Hank Snow (d 1999) Grandpa Jones (d 1998)Bill Monroe (d 1996) Curly Fox (d 1995) Roy Acuff (d 1992) LewDeWitt (of the Statler Brothers) (d 1990) Bradley Kincaid (d 1989)Jimmie Riddle (d 1982) and DeFord Bailey (d 1982) In other casesmy subjects had been gone for years I never got to meet Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson Riley Puckett Lew Childre Vernon Dalhart Karl and HartyTommy Magness Seven Foot Dilly Arthur Q Smith Albert E Brumleyand others But I was able to talk to their friends and relatives and getsome sense of what kind of people they were some sense of personalityto flesh out the bare bones of discography and chronology

I have divided these profiles into seven sections The first comprisesprobably the best-known names here those who are in the CountryMusic Hall of Fame These are in every real sense legendary figureswhose careers have spanned generations and have established them-selves as seminal figures in the development of the music The secondcategory ldquoFrom the Victrolardquo celebrates the first generation of countryrecording stars from the 1920smdashnames that are familiar to most coun-try fans but that are lacking in any sense of identity The great age oflive country radio is reflected in section three ldquoFrom the AirwavesrdquoDuring the 1930s and 1940s virtually every country musician had toestablish himself or herself by doing live radio work (I have chronicled

ixIntroduction

one particular show from this era the Grand Ole Opry in my A Good-Natured Riot [Country Music FoundationVanderbilt University Press1999])

Next comes a series of tributes to ldquoUnsung Heroesrdquo figures whoplayed significant roles in the music but have been neglected orignored by the formal histories ldquoFrom the Stagerdquo chronicles the main-stream artists who found their best venue to be the live personal per-formance the touring show These were the old-time ldquoshowmenrdquo whosedynamic performances transcended any individual song or stylemdashStringbean duck-walking across the stage to get to the mike MarthaCarson whirling through the audience during a driving gospel song BillCarlisle leaping four feet straight up into the air behind a microphoneand telling an audience to ldquoShut uprdquo ldquoFrom the Westrdquo includes por-traits of our first genuine singing cowgirl Billie Maxwell as well as otherperformers in this style Finally there is a section devoted to modernacts who have a special affinity for the older styles ldquoNew Fogiesrdquo toremind us that this tradition remains in good hands

Charles K WolfeMurfreesboro TennesseeFebruary 2000

x Introduction

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

one particular show from this era the Grand Ole Opry in my A Good-Natured Riot [Country Music FoundationVanderbilt University Press1999])

Next comes a series of tributes to ldquoUnsung Heroesrdquo figures whoplayed significant roles in the music but have been neglected orignored by the formal histories ldquoFrom the Stagerdquo chronicles the main-stream artists who found their best venue to be the live personal per-formance the touring show These were the old-time ldquoshowmenrdquo whosedynamic performances transcended any individual song or stylemdashStringbean duck-walking across the stage to get to the mike MarthaCarson whirling through the audience during a driving gospel song BillCarlisle leaping four feet straight up into the air behind a microphoneand telling an audience to ldquoShut uprdquo ldquoFrom the Westrdquo includes por-traits of our first genuine singing cowgirl Billie Maxwell as well as otherperformers in this style Finally there is a section devoted to modernacts who have a special affinity for the older styles ldquoNew Fogiesrdquo toremind us that this tradition remains in good hands

Charles K WolfeMurfreesboro TennesseeFebruary 2000

x Introduction

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Cl assi c

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Part I From the Hall of Fame

Pee Wee King All photos courtesy of the Charles K Wolfe Collection

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

The OriginalCarter Family 1928 All photoscourtesy of theCharles K WolfeCollection

Mother Maybelle andthe Carter Sisters

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Roy Acuff and group 1940 Left to right Pete ldquoBashful Bro Oswaldrdquo Kirby JessEasterday Acuff Rachael Veach Lonnie ldquoPaprdquo Wilson

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Lefty Frizzell Photo byWalden S Fabry

Grandpa Jones and Ramona on the GrandOle Opry 1955

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones ldquoGrandpa and Minniersquos Kitchenrdquo Hee Haw 1975

Pee Wee King (with accordion) and group 1937

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Bill Monroe on the Grand Ole Opry 1940

Left to right Kenny Baker (fiddle) Bill Monroe (mandolin) unknown guitarist(possibly Joe Stuart) Jack Hicks (banjo) bass player not visible or known 1974Photo by Charles K Wolfe

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Hank Snow BoxcarWillie and KirkMcGee Opry Lounge1981

Hank Snow on stage at the Grand Ole Opry

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Left to right Johnnie Wright Chet Atkins (with fiddle) Kitty Wells Smilinrsquo EddieHill c 1948

Fiddlinrsquo JohnCarson and hisdaughterMoonshine Kate

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Vernon Dalhart

Charlie Poole (seated) with the NorthCarolina Ramblers

Riley Puckett c 1935

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Left to right bottom Lew Childre ldquoMr Poochrdquo Marge Tillman ldquoUncle Moserdquo(blackface) Floyd Tillman accordion player unknown

Blue Sky Boys

Bill and Charlie Monroe 1936

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Karl and Harty

Zeb and ZekeTurner 1948

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

The Rouse Brothers

Elvis Presley (center) with the Jordanaires

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Curly Fox and Texas Ruby c 1936

Emmett Miller 1949

Alton and Rabon Delmore

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvin Brothers withJohnny Cash (center)

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

The Statler Brothers c 1967

Martha Carson

Cliff Carlisle

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Albert E Brumley being interviewed in his office

Stringbean (David Akeman)and Lew Childre 1946

Red River Dave

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Merle and Doc Watson

The Freight Hoppers

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

2

The Carter Family

It was the granddaddy of all country music success stories the patternon which dozens of Music Row Cinderella tales would be founded Alocal group used to singing on front porches and at country churcheswanders into what today would be termed a talent call More by accidentthan by design the group gets an audition the big-time talent scoutcanrsquot believe his ears A contract is signed records are cut in a matterof months the group hears its records playing from the Victrolas rolledout in front of the appliance stores in its hometown Across the countrymillions hear the same music and are charmed by its feeling its sim-plicity its soul A career is launched and soon the little country groupis making it in the big time on national radio continuing to producegreat music but struggling to ward off personal problems divorce andchanging tastes It is a story almost as familiar as the music of the groupor the name of the group The Carter Family

The interesting thing about legends is that some of them are trueBack on that hot August day in 1927 the big-time recording scout fromVictor Records in New York was really not impressed with what he sawat the door of his studio There were two women and a man herecalled ldquoHe is dressed in overalls and the women are country womenfrom way back theremdashcalico clothes onmdashthe children are very poorlydressed They look like hillbilliesrdquo The man in overalls was AlvinPleasant Carter but they called him AP He was a lean hawk-facedyoung man with a pleasant bemused expression not unlike that of GaryCooper in Sergeant York With him was a woman holding an odd littleinstrument called an autoharp that she had ordered from Searsrsquo mailorder catalog and a seven-month-old baby named Joe She was APrsquoswife Sara Carter The third woman the one holding the big guitar star-ing around the studio with a surprising confidence was Sararsquos cousinMaybelle They had spent the entire previous day driving an old Model

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

A Ford down mountain roads and across rocky streams to get to theaudition Theyrsquod had three flat tires and the weather was so hot that thepatches had melted off almost as fast as AP had put them on But theywere here and they were wanting a record tryout

ldquoHererdquo was the sleepy mountain town of Bristol straddling thestate line between Virginia and Tennessee In an empty furniture storeat 408 State Streetmdashthe street that was actually the state linemdashtheVictor Talking Machine Company had set up a temporary studio It waslate summer 1927 and country music didnrsquot even have a name yetVictor called its brand ldquoOld-Time Melodies of the Sunny Southrdquo Thecompany had only recently decided to get into the country music busi-ness Field teams had been sent into the South to find authentic mate-rial and singers who would sound more soulful than their current bigsinging sensation Vernon Dalhart Heading this team in fact headingall the teams that summer was a fast-talking moon-faced young mannamed Ralph Peer Several years before Peer had helped Americanrecord companies discover the blues now he was doing the same withldquohillbillyrdquo music For two weeks he had been at work in Bristol audi-tioning talent and recording them on the spot in his studio he hadalready recorded classics by the Stoneman Family harmonica playerHenry Whitter and gospel singer Alfred Karnes soon he would pro-duce the first sides by a young man named Jimmie Rodgers Thoughhe didnrsquot know it at the time he was in the middle of what Johnny Cashwould later call ldquothe single most important event in the history of coun-try musicrdquo

The family auditioned for Peer on the morning of Monday August 1and that evening at 630 he took them into the studio In those days itwasnrsquot uncommon to cut a session of four sides in three hoursmdashand therewere times during the course of the Bristol sessions when Peer managedto cut as many as twelve masters a day Though the Carters were relativelyyoung (Maybelle was only eighteen) they were full of old songs they hadlearned in their nearby mountain home of Maces Spring Virginia Thefirst one they tried was ldquoBury Me Under the Weeping Willowrdquo an oldnineteenth-century lament that both girls had known since childhoodPeer at once realized that he had something ldquoAs soon as I heard Sararsquosvoicerdquo he recalled ldquoI knew it was going to be wonderfulrdquo

And it was Peer cut three more songs that night and asked thegroup to return the next morning to cut two more These six sidesbecame the start of one of the most incredible dynasties in Americanmusic For over sixty years now some part or offshoot of this CarterFamily trio has been a fixture on the country music scene The familyrsquosmusical contributions have ranged from the pure folk sound of the orig-

3The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

inal trio to the contemporary rock-tinged sound of Maybellersquos grand-daughter Carlene ldquoCarter Family songsrdquo is a term that has becomealmost synonymous with old-time country standards and parts of theCarter repertoire are revived in almost every generation by a wide rangeof singers and pickers including Hank Williams (who toured withMaybelle and her daughters) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (whoadded a honky-tonk beat to ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo in the 1950s) Roy Acuff(whose anthem ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo was first recorded by theCarters) Johnny Cash (who married Maybellersquos daughter June) theNitty Gritty Dirt Band (who recorded the classic album Will the Circle BeUnbroken with Maybelle in 1971) Emmylou Harris and dozens of oth-ers Though their recording career lasted only fourteen yearsmdashfromthat day in Bristol in 1927 until the eve of World War II in 1941mdashtheCarters managed to work for every major label and make some 270records among them some of the most influential recordings in coun-try music history ldquoThey didnrsquot have gold records in those daysrdquo saidmodern publishing giant Wesley Rose ldquoBut if they had the Carterswould have had a wall fullrdquo What the industry could do was vote theminto the Hall of Fame which it did in 1970

After they made the six sides for Peer that day in 1927 the triodrove back to their mountain farm and AP returned to his old job ofselling fruit trees In September the first batch of recordings from theBristol sessions was released in the new ldquoOrthophonic Victor SouthernSeriesrdquo Big ads appeared in the Bristol papers As AP scanned the listhis heart sank no Carter records had been selected for release Anotherbatch appeared in October again no Carters AP had about given uphope when in November the local furniture store dealer who had theVictor franchise hunted up AP to tell him that ldquoThe Wandering Boyrdquohad finally been issued and that he had a nice royalty check for him Afew months later a second record ldquoThe Storms Are on the Oceanrdquocame out At this point Peer realized that Carter music was catching onsoon their records were outselling all the others recorded at the Bristolsessions including those of Jimmie Rodgers

Not long afterward Peer sent the group expense money to come tothe New Jersey studios for more sessions Here they cut twelve moresongs including such standards as ldquoLittle Darling Pal of Minerdquo ldquoKeepon the Sunny Siderdquo (an 1899 Sunday school song adapted from TheYoung Peoplersquos Hymnal No 2 that eventually became the Carter theme)ldquoAnchored in Loverdquo (another taken from an old church songbook itwound up selling almost 100000 records) ldquoJohn Hardyrdquo (a famous bad-man ballad) ldquoWill You Miss Me When Irsquom Gonerdquo (a latter-day favoritewith bluegrass bands) and a simple piece called ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo In

4 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

this one Maybelle figured out a way to pick the melody on the lowerstrings of her guitar while she strummed the chords on the higherstrings This technique soon known as ldquothe Carter lickrdquo became the sin-gle most influential guitar style in country music It wasnrsquot hard to mas-ter and soon every kid who could get his hands on a guitar was beingtold ldquoFirst yoursquove got to learn to play lsquoWildwood Flowerrsquordquo The songitself was another old one AP had learned in the mountains though hedidnrsquot know it at the time it was actually an 1859 sheet music song thathad been a vaudeville favorite since before the Civil War At Peerrsquos sug-gestion AP filed copyright on this and dozens of other older songs hearranged rewrote or adapted Many of them still appear in the Peer-Southern catalog

If there had ever been any doubt about the Cartersrsquo popularityldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ended it Not only was it sold by record storesaround the country it was peddled by Sears Roebuck in its catalog andlater issued on the Montgomery Ward label for sale in that companyrsquoscatalog a later 1935 remake was sold in dime stores across the land onlabels such as Conqueror Melotone Vocalion and others It was easilythe best-selling of all the Carter records and one that remained in printwell into the LP era

Unlike Jimmie Rodgers Peerrsquos other big find at Bristol the Cartersseemed oddly unable to capitalize on their record success In the late1920s and early 1930s while Rodgers was playing the big RKO vaude-ville houses in Dallas and Atlanta the Carters were setting up plankstages and hanging kerosene lamps for shows in remote mountain coaltowns While Rodgers was in Hollywood making films AP was nailinghis own homemade posters to trees and barns announcing CarterFamily concerts and asserting ldquoThis program is morally goodrdquo WhileRodgers stayed in deluxe hotels the Carters went home with fans whoinvited them to spend the night and ldquotake supperrdquo

Things got so bad in 1929 at the peak of their recording careerthat the Carters were not even performing together full-time AP wentnorth to find work in Detroit Maybelle and her husband moved toWashington DC Tension began to grow between AP and Sara For atime in 1933 they even separated eventually getting back together toperform with the group Both women who did most of the actualsinging on the records were busy raising their young families andnobody was really making a living with the music At times it was hardto get together and AP would on occasion use his sister Sylvia toreplace Sara or Maybelle if one of them couldnrsquot get free

The great records continued There were ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight ofMy Blue Eyesrdquo and ldquoWabash Cannonballrdquo in 1929 ldquoWorried Man Bluesrdquo

5The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

(ldquoIt takes a worried man to sing a worried songrdquo) and ldquoLonesomeValleyrdquo in 1930 ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo in 1933 and then in 1935ldquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo This was the first recording of the clas-sic song in the form we know it today The Carters had actually recordedit for Victor in 1933 but the company didnrsquot think enough of it torelease it After they signed with the American Record Company in 1935(the company that eventually became Columbia) the Carters re-recorded it with much better results The song was a textbook case ofhow AP could take an older song and make it relevant to a new audi-ence This one started out as a rather stuffy gospel song copyrighted bytwo famous gospel songwriters Ada R Habershon and Charles HGabriel under the title ldquoWill the Circle Be Unbrokenrdquo AP took thechorus to this song and grafted onto it a new set of lyrics about deathand bereavement The version was issued and reissued throughout the1930s eventually appearing on ten different labels When singers likeHank Williams and Roy Acuff began singing the song in the 1940s theyreverted to the use of the word ldquowillrdquo in the title and the chorus theirusage stuck But in every other respect the song was the Cartersrsquo

AP was officially the leader of the group but his real role was thatof manager and song-finder or songwriter He also did emcee work formost of the stage shows and acted as front man cutting most of thedeals Most of the music however was really the work of Sara andMaybelle Years later Maybelle recalled of AP ldquoIf he felt like singinghe would sing and if he didnrsquot he would walk around and look at thewindowrdquo In one sense then the Carter Family could be thought of ascountry musicrsquos first successful female singing group since most of therecords focused on Sara and Maybellersquos work APrsquos great talent wasfinding songs he would travel far into the mountains looking for themFor a time in those days before tape recorders he hired a black bluesguitarist named Lesley Riddle to go with him AP would write down thewords to songs he liked it was Lesleyrsquos job to memorize the music Hisassociation with Lesley gave AP a love of the blues evidenced in hitslike ldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo

In 1938 the Carters hit big-time radio moving from the Virginiamountains to the dusty border town of Del Rio Texas Here everymorning they would go into the studios of XERA a radio station whosetransmitter stood across the border in Mexico and do a show for theConsolidated Royal Chemical Corporation Border radio stations likeXERA aimed their broadcasts into the southern and midwestern partsof the United States blasting out with a power of over 100000 wattsmdashafar stronger signal than any legally authorized United States stationThe Carters could now be heard throughout much of the country and

6 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

their fans multiplied by the tens of thousands By now the childrenwere getting old enough to join the act Sara and APrsquos daughterJanette began her career here as did Maybellersquos three little girlsHelen June and Anita Many of the recordings of these radio showsmdashknown as transcriptionsmdashhave since been issued on LP They give a fas-cinating picture of wonderful informal music-rich broadcasts repletewith commercials for tonic medicines

Thousands of fan letters poured in and record sales skyrocketed Bynow the group was recording for Decca and doing some of its best workBut bad luck set in again In 1939 AP and Sara split for good Sara movedto California Then in 1941 XERA went off the air One last chance aroseto get togethermdasha six-month contract with radio station WBT inCharlotte A photographer from Life magazine came down to do a majorphoto spread on the threesome For a moment it looked like the bignational break might come after all The photographer filled up a waste-basket with flash bulbs but the Carters waited in vain for the story tocome out The story they eventually found out had been displaced by aneven bigger one the bombing of Pearl Harbor This was the final disap-pointment Sara really called it quits and AP went back to his home inthe mountains of Virginia where he eventually opened a country storeMaybelle started up a new act featuring herself and her daughters even-tually finding her way to Springfield Missouri where she teamed up witha young guitar player named Chet Atkins All the Carters would keeptheir hand in the music for another twenty years and all would eventuallymake more records but none of these recordings featured the originaltrio The act was history AP died in 1960 Maybelle in 1978 and Sara in1979 Their legacy was a hundred great songs a standard for duet singingand a guitar style that helped define the music As music historian TonyRussell has put it ldquoWhenever singers and pickers gather to play lsquoKeep onthe Sunny Sidersquo or lsquoCan the Circle Be Unbrokenrsquo Sara Maybelle andAP are there benign and immortal spiritsrdquo

The Carter Family on Border Radio

It was October 1938 and another hot afternoon in the border town ofDel Rio Texas A few miles away was the Rio Grande and across it theMexican town of Las Vacas off to the northwest ran US Highway 3 theldquoscenic routerdquo that led through Devilrsquos River To the east Highway 3turned back into gravel and dirtmdashwhat the maps called an ldquoall-weatherroadrdquomdashand wound some 150 miles to the nearest large town SanAntonio On the steps of Del Riorsquos biggest hotel the Grand a mannamed Harry Steele stood waiting looking up the road toward San

7The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

Antonio He was a radio announcer working for the ConsolidatedRoyal Chemical Company out of Chicago a company that made vari-ous patent nostrums like Kolorbak (a hair dye) and Peruna (a coughmedicine) He was a long way from Chicago now though down herein this arid corner of Texas working on a strange new radio stationcalled XERA His bosses had found that they could sell boxes andboxes of their products by advertising on the station especially whenthe programs featured country singers Steele was waiting for thenewest act on the Consolidated roster a trio from Virginia named theCarter Family

The leader of the group a man named AP Carter had just calledto say they were just a few miles out and Steele had gone out on theporch to wait Consolidated had sealed its deal with the family by buy-ing them a big new Chevrolet and eight days before they had startedout for Texas from their mountain home in Maces Spring VirginiaTheir first broadcast was scheduled for this evening and to meet thedate AP had been driving ten hours a day over chunky Depression-eraroads Steele knew they would be exhausted Finally he saw a bigChevrolet driving slowly down the street stopping in front of the hotelIt was the dustiest car he had ever seenmdashmuch of the road to SanAntonio was not then pavedmdashand strapped to the back was somethingthat looked like a motorcycle (He found out later it belonged to shy lit-tle Maybelle) Steele was not sure this was the right car but a tall lankyman got out and squinted up at the hotel Two women got out of theother door and a teenage girl from the back Then Steele was sure whothey were He started down the steps with his hand out to greet themThe Carter Family had arrived in Texas

It had been just about eleven years before that the odyssey of theCarter Family had begun with the release of their first Victor record Ithad come from that famous session in Bristol where talent scout RalphPeer had auditioned both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers within thespace of a few days Now Rodgers was dead and the contract with Victoronly a bitter memory they had done over 120 sides for the companyseen some handsome royalty checks and were still seeing those tunesreissued on Victorrsquos new Bluebird label and through the MontgomeryWard label But the record checks had been about their only depend-able income the big-time vaudeville and motion picture contracts thathad come to Jimmie Rodgers had eluded them while Rodgers washeadlining RKO AP was still booking schoolhouse shows in the moun-tains and tacking up posters on trees and barns Ralph Peer who wasstill serving as their personal manager had been aced out of his jobwith Victor but still had a wealth of contacts and was determined to get

8 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

the Carters a decent gig He got them record deals with ARC (theAmerican Record Company now Columbia) and with Decca Shortlyafter the last Decca session (in Charlotte in June 1938) Peer called APwith the best deal yet as good as records were the real money now wasin big-time radio and Peer had an offer from Consolidated to work sixmonths on the border radio stationmdashfrom October to March the cold-est and most bitter months in the mountainsmdashand then have sixmonthsrsquo vacation For this each member would get $75 a weekmdashbothworking and on vacation As a bonus there was the car Not only was itdecent money Peer reminded them but it was a chance at a nationalradio audiencemdasha chance to expand their audience beyond theSoutheast In spite of the relocation problems and the growing familiesof both women no one had to think very long Texas it was

Just why South Texas had become the country music radio capital inthe mid-1930s was another story It all started with a ldquoradio doctorrdquonamed John R Brinkley who got in trouble in Kansas for selling a goatgland remedy (for virility) over the air In 1932 to escape prosecutionhe set up a new radio station XER with studios in Del Rio Texas butwith a transmitter across the border in Mexico At that time the FederalRadio Commission had a limit of 50000 watts for all American stationsMexico did not and XER had soon boosted its power to an incredible500000 watts With this it could blanket most of the continental UnitedStates drowning out and overriding many of the domestic stations XERchanged its call letters to XERA in 1935 and was soon joined by a hostof other ldquoXrdquo stations using a similar technique by the time the Cartersarrived in 1938 there were no fewer than eleven such stations Theybecame outlets for dozens of American companies offering a wide rangeof dubious mail-order products cancer cures hair restoratives patentmedicines like Crazy Water Crystals (ldquofor regularityrdquo) baby chickensldquoResurrection plantsrdquo and even autographed pictures of Jesus Christ Itdidnrsquot take the advertisers long to figure out that their long-windedpitches worked best when surrounded by country music and by the mid-1930s a veritable parade of record stars were making the long drive downHighway 3 The Pickard Family formerly of the Grand Ole Opry camedown in 1936 Jessie Rodgers (Jimmiersquos cousin) came as did CowboySlim Rinehart J E Mainerrsquos Mountaineers fresh from their success withldquoMaple on the Hillrdquo came down to work for Crazy Water Crystals

The Carters soon found themselves at the center of this hectic newworld The very night they arrived they were asked to make out a list ofsongs they could do on the spot and then were rushed into the studioAt 810 the Consolidated Chemical Radio Hour took to the air live it ran fortwo hours and was filled with a bizarre variety of singers comedians and

9The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

announcers The Carters were not on mike the whole time but they werethe stars and they carried the lionrsquos share of the work Their sound waspretty much the way it had been on records Sara played the autoharpMaybelle the guitar Now though there were fewer duets between Saraand APmdashthe pair had been separated for several years and would get adivorce in 1939mdashand AP himself sang more solos and even began tofeature his own guitar playing on the air There was more trio singingnow and more plugging of records including the recent Decca sides likeldquoCoal Minerrsquos Bluesrdquo and ldquoStern Old Bachelorrdquo and ldquoLittle Joerdquo JanetteAP and Sararsquos teenage daughter began to do an occasional solo (LaterMaybellersquos children would join them as well)

The family soon found that they would be earning the salary andthat regardless of how glamorous it sounded regular radio broadcastingcould be grueling Their contract called for them to broadcast twice aday six days a week afternoons were taken up with rehearsals and somemornings were given over to cutting transcriptions for the station to playfor their early morning show one hard morningrsquos work would yieldenough recorded programs to allow the group to sleep in the other daysThen every evening at 810 there was the live show to do ldquoYou hardlyhad any time to yourselfrdquo Maybelle recalled Though Maybellersquos hus-band Eck was able to come down and join them later that yearMaybelle missed her children whom she had left with relatives inVirginia The first year in the big time was rougher than they had everimagined

It was doing wonders for the Carter Family music though For atime it was hard to tell just how well the shows were going over At theend of their shows however announcer Harry Steele reminded listen-ers to send in box tops from Consolidated products to get free giftssuch as a Bible or a picture (The idea was to build a mailing list) Soonthe Carters were generating some 25000 box tops a weekmdashto thedelight of the company June Carter later recalled that during this timeyou could hang a tin can on any barbed-wire fence in Texas and hearthe Carter Family But the signals carried far beyond Texas when thegroup got back to their home in Virginia after that season they found5000 fan letters waiting for them Their Decca and ARC record salesboomed as never before tens of thousands were sold on the dark redConqueror label through Sears catalogs Suddenly the Carters wereAmericarsquos singing group

Delighted with these results Consolidated quickly signed the familyon for a second season to run from October 1939 to March 1940 Thisseason saw a host of changes For one thing both Maybelle and Saradecided they wanted their children with them Before the end of the

10 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

first year Maybellersquos youngest girl Anita had joined them as well asJanette then fifteen In an era of child stars on the radio (like LittleJimmie Sizemore) six-year-old Anita had emerged as a special favoritewith fans and letters had poured in praising her The older kids back inVirginia were understandably jealous June recalled ldquoAt night we lis-tened to the powerful signal coming up from Texas lying on our stom-achs with our chins in our hands me and Helen Then Anitarsquos voicewould come over the air and at first we didnrsquot believe it was her Itdidnrsquot seem right that Anita should be down in Texas with Mothersinging so well on the radiordquo Both June (now ten) and Helen (nowtwelve) wrote letters to Del Rio begging to come down and nowMaybelle agreed June would play autoharp and guitar and Helen gui-tar and all three of Maybellersquos children would sing together as an actThe only problem was that June didnrsquot really want to sing and Maybellewas not sure she could carry her share June remembers her mother say-ing ldquoIf yoursquore gonna be on the worldrsquos largest radio station with usmdashwersquoll need some kind of miraclerdquo

But the second season was a miracle of sorts and all the Carter chil-dren found parts on the show A new announcer had arrived BrotherBill Rinehart and it was he who emceed the shows and often delivereda moral at the end of the songs A typical show would start off with thewhole family opening with their theme song ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquoand then go into a favorite like ldquoGoinrsquo Back to Texasrdquo with AP Saraand Maybelle Then Maybelle and Sara might do a duet like ldquoCowboyJackrdquo and AP a solo like ldquoDiamonds in the Roughrdquo Then June Helenand Anita would do a piece like ldquoIrsquove Been Working on the Railroadrdquoand Janette a solo like ldquoThe Last Letterrdquo then a current hit There wasusually time for an instrumentalmdashSara and Maybelle doing ldquoShorteningBreadrdquo or ldquoRed Wingrdquomdashand then another gospel standard like ldquoWhatWould You Give in Exchange for Your Soulrdquo

By now the family was putting more and more of its programs on bigsixteen-inch electrical transcriptions This gave them a little more timeoff and allowed Maybelle and her daughters to live in San Antonio Thiswas convenient because most of these transcriptions were recorded inthe basement of the San Antonio home of Don Baxter the stationrsquos engi-neer From a thirty-minute show on disc Baxter could then dub offcopies and send the transcriptions to other border stations such as XEGand XENT This helped ldquonetworkrdquo the Carter music even further andtheir fame continued to rise (After the demise of the border stationsmany of these big shiny transcriptions were tossed out and for yearsfarmers in the area used them to shingle their chicken houses)

For the family itself though things were becoming as uncertain as

11The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

the war clouds that were gathering in Europe The break between Saraand AP had become permanent and on February 20 1939 Sara mar-ried APrsquos cousin Coy Bayes at Brackettville Texas Family tales tell ofAP standing at the back of the church staring vacantly at the cere-mony As Sararsquos new husband prepared a home for them in Californiashe boarded with Maybelle and her kids AP and his children lived inAlamo Heights Though he still arranged songs with his customarygenius he began to take less and less interest in choosing repertoire forthe shows for a time he got involved in directing a choir for the localMethodist church sometimes even arranging old Carter Family songsfor it

By March 1941 XERA was off the air and the colorful era of bor-der radio was coming to an end It also meant for all practical pur-poses an end to the original Carter Family AP would return to PoorValley never to remarry never to match the fame he had had onXERA Sara would retire from the business and go to CaliforniaMaybelle would remain in radio working her children into her actand eventually make her way to Nashville There would be an abortedcomeback in 1943 but basically the Carter Family was ended But theborder radio years had been invaluable for themmdashand for countrymusic It was here that their wonderful harmonies had made theirimpact on a national audience and helped spread classic countrysinging styles across the land It was here too that the Carters passedthe torch to their next generation and set the stage for later careers ofJoe Janette June Helen and Anita Though the old transcriptionswith Brother Bill Rinehart might be rusting on dilapidated chickenhouses the Carter Family sound would live on

The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle

It was the winter of 1942ndash43 and the Original Carter Family was makingits last stand over radio station WBT in Charlotte North Carolina Since1927 when they made their first recordings at the famous Bristol sessionsAP and Sara Carter along with their younger cousin Maybelle had dom-inated the new field of country harmony singing They had recordedtheir classic hits like ldquoWildwood Flowerrdquo ldquoIrsquom Thinking Tonight of MyBlue Eyesrdquo ldquoKeep on the Sunny Siderdquo and ldquoGold Watch and Chainrdquo forevery major record label and since 1938 had spread their music allaround the nation over the powerful ldquoborder radiordquo stations along theRio Grande But times were changing Sara Carter had divorced APremarried and moved to California Maybelle had married at sixteen toAPrsquos brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and had started her family three daugh-

12 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

ters named Helen Anita and June The big border stations had closeddown and the record business beset by shellac shortages from the warwas a shadow of its former self Small wonder that when a company calledDrug Trade Products offered AP a twenty-week contract to work the win-ter at WBT he accepted WBT was a 50000-watt station with a huge cov-erage and a good cast of other musicians and the money was too good topass up For the last time the Original Carters gathered together againmoving into the Roosevelt Hotel on South Tryon Street in Charlottebecause of the housing shortage

Maybelle Carter was forty-five that year she had blossomed fromthe shy small dark-eyed guitar player into a seasoned and confidentmusician and songwriter and had even contributed several originalsongs to the last Carter Family Victor session the year before Her hus-band Ezra had recently taken early retirement from his job on the rail-road (due to low blood pressure) and was interested in seeing Maybelleform her own group with her girls By now the two oldest Helen andJune were in high school and Anita the baby was barely eleven Allthree had gained entertainment experience when their mother hadbrought them onto the border radio shows in 1939 Helen sang andplayed the guitar June the autoharp and even little Anita would singand play guitar The old radio transcriptions from XET showed the kidsdoing their own specialties on the showmdashJune strumming the autoharpand singing ldquoEngine 143rdquo all of them together doing ldquoGive Me theRoses While I Liverdquo and ldquoSomewhere a-Working for My Lordrdquo TheCarter Sisters as they were starting to be called had decided theywanted to try for a career as they finished school and Maybelle wasagreeable All this took on a new excitement when Life magazine sentdown a photographer to document the familyrsquos music at Charlotte fora time it looked like a cover story and a chance for the Original CarterFamily to get the national publicity it had been needing But after doinga long series of photos both in Charlotte and back home in Poor Valleythe magazine decided war news was more pressing and the project wasscrapped The last hope of keeping the original group together hadvanished Thus when the contract at Charlotte expired AP decided toreturn to Virginia while Sara went back to the West Coast with her newhusband ldquoIt really wasnrsquot all Dadrsquos decisionrdquo recalls AP and Sararsquos sonJoe ldquoMaybelle had been wanting to strike out with the girls for sometime When she got that offer to go up to Richmond and be on theradio they thought it was a good dealrdquo

Maybellersquos group returned to Maces Spring that spring for someRampR and then in June 1943 headed for Richmond At first they did acommercially sponsored program for the Nolde Brothers Bakery over

13The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

WRNL as ldquoThe Carter Sistersrdquo Then in September 1946 the group wasasked by WRVArsquos leading star Sunshine Sue to become members of anew show that was starting up to be called the Old Dominion Barn DanceSunshine Sue Workman was a native of Iowa and had won a solid rep-utation appearing on various Midwest programs through the 1930s Shehad arrived at WRVA in January 1940 and was a natural choice to behost of the new barn dance program in doing so she became the firstwoman emcee of any major barn dance show Her music featured herown accordion and warm soft voice doing songs like ldquoYou Are MySunshinerdquo Like Maybelle she was juggling being a wife and motherwith being a radio star she also by the late 1940s was planning the BarnDance shows and organizing touring groups

By March 1947 the new barn dance was doing daily shows from alocal theater from 3 pm to 4 pm soon though it moved to Saturdaynights where WRVArsquos 50000 watts of power sent it up and down theEast Coast In addition to the Carter Sisters who were now getting head-line billing the early cast included Sunshine Suersquos husband JohnWorkman who with his brother headed up the staff band the RangersJoe and Rose Lee Maphis (with the fine guitarist being billed as ldquoCrazyJoerdquo) the veteran North Carolina band the Tobacco Tags and localfavorites like singer Benny Kissinger champion fiddler Curley Collinsand the remarkable steel guitar innovator Slim Idaho

By 1950 the cast had grown to a hundred and included majornational figures like Chick Stripling Grandpa and Ramona Jones TobyStroud and Jackie Phelps The stationrsquos general manager John Tanseyworked closely with Sunshine Sue to make the Old Dominion Barn Dancea major player in country radio At the end of its first year it was fillingits 1400-seat theater two times every Saturday night and by December1947 it could brag it had played to 100000 ldquopaid admissionsrdquo TheCarters realized they were riding a winner

As always success on radio also meant a bruising round of week-night concerts in schoolhouses and small theaters Eck Carter did a lotof driving in his Frazier and on the way there was time to rehearse newsongs June Carter recalls ldquoThe back seat became a place where welearned to sing our parts Helen always on key Anita on key and a goodsteady glare to remind me that I was a little sharp or flat Travelingin the early days became a world of cheap gas stations hamburgerstourist homes and old hotels with stairs to climb We worked the KempTime circuit the last of the vaudeville days and the yearning to keep onsinging or traveling just a little further never leftrdquo And in spite of theirgrowing popularity the sisters continued to hear the border radio tran-scriptions of the Original Family over many of the stationsmdashproof it

14 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

seemed the old Carter sound was not yet as passeacute as some thought itwas By now Helen had learned to play the accordion (agrave la SunshineSue) and Anita was standing on a box and playing the bass fiddle

The early days at Richmond were especially hard on June Helenhad already graduated from the high school back in Hiltons but Junewas just coming up on her senior year and she would be spending it ina large Richmond school called John Marshall High School She wasself-conscious about her accent (in which a touch of Texas drawl hadbeen added to her Poor Valley dialect) her looks and the way in whichshe would be hoofing across some theater stage at night instead ofdoing homework She remembers ldquoI took a good look at myself Myhair went just where it wanted to go and I was singing those hillbillysongs on that radio station every day and somewhere on a stage everynight I just didnrsquot have the east Virginia lsquocouthrsquo those girls hadrdquo Inresponse to her problems with singing on pitch and her natural volu-bility she began to turn to comedy ldquoI had created a crazy country char-acter named Aunt Polly Carter who would do anything for a laugh Shewore a flat hat and pointed shoes and did all kinds of old vaudevillebitsrdquo She also sometimes wore elaborate bloomers since in her dancesteps her feet were often above her head And for a time part of the acthad her swinging by a rope out over the audience But she managed tohave a great senior year at her new schoolmdashshe learned to read ldquoroundnotesrdquo and to sing in the girlsrsquo choir and to make new and lastingfriends But in 1946 when it was all over she cried because there was noway she could follow her friends off to college

The Carter Sisters spent five good years in Richmond and by thetime they left the girls had all become seasoned professionals and thegroup was no longer being confused with the Original Carter Family ithad an identity and a sound of its own In 1948 they took a new jobover WNOX in Knoxville Tennessee where they played on the eveningshow the Tennessee Barn Dance and the daily show the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round

Though the former dated from 1941 and the latter from the 1930sthe station was hitting its stride in the late 40s and was being thought ofas a AAA farm club for the national shows like the Opry Regularsincluded Archie Campbell Homer and Jethro the Bailey BrothersWally Fowler and the Oak Ridge Quartet Carl Smith Pappy ldquoGuberdquoBeaver the Carlisles the Louvin Brothers Cowboy Copas and suchstrange novelty acts as Little Moses the Human Lodestone One ofthose who was amazed at the popularity of the Carters was a young gui-tar player named Chet Atkins ldquoThey were an instant success Crowdsflocked into the auditorium every day to see them the crowds were so

15The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

heavy at the Barn Dance on Saturday night that you had to come earlyeven to get inrdquo He was thus surprised and pleased when Eck came tohim one day and offered him a job traveling with the group ldquoWersquoll cutyou in for one-sixth of what we makerdquo he said ldquoThatrsquos equal shares foreach of usrdquo

Soon Atkins was crowding into the back seat of Eckrsquos Frazier as theyheaded out after the Saturday Knoxville show to play in one of the bigmusic parks in Pennsylvania During all of this time the Carter Sistersand Mother Maybelle for all of their success in radio had not recordedon their own This was finally remedied on February 2 1949 when theentire ensemble traveled to Atlanta to record a double session for RCAVictor They produced eight sides the first two issued were ldquoTheKneeling Drunkardrsquos Pleardquo which was credited to them and ldquoMyDarlingrsquos Home Againrdquo which they had gotten from Johnnie and JackMore popular were ldquoWhy Do You Weep Dear Willowrdquo from Lynn Davisand Molly OrsquoDay and ldquoSomeonersquos Last Dayrdquo June added a couple ofnovelties ldquoRoot Hog or Dierdquo and ldquoThe Baldheaded End of the BroomrdquoThe sales were above averagemdashsome of the sides were among the veryfirst to be issued by RCA on the new 45 rpm ldquodoughnutrdquo recordsmdashandthe band was quickly scheduled for another session later that year Inthe meantime on May 17 1949 June lent her comedy talents to the firstRCA session by Homer and Jethro In New York City they did a takeoffon the pop song ldquoBaby Itrsquos Cold Outsiderdquo It got onto the charts estab-lished Homer and Jethro as comic ldquosong butchersrdquo and establishednineteen-year-old June as a comedienne in her own right

June 1949 saw the troupe once again uprooted this time headedfor KWTO in Springfield Missouri The small towns around southernMissouri and northern Arkansas offered new audiences for personalappearances and the Radiozark company was making the station into acenter for transcribed shows Helen recalls ldquoWe did two or three radioshows a day worked every night and got up in the morning and startedall over againrdquo

Chet Atkins was still with them though the girls were increasinglyconcerned about his debilitating asthma attacks June remembersldquoChester and I set up the public address system and hersquod have thoseasthma attacks and Irsquod have to lug the stuff inrdquo But two things of lastinginterest happened in the year they stayed in Springfield they cut a seriesof thirty-nine fifteen-minute transcriptions which featured a good cross-section of their repertoire as well as some fine Atkins solos (Copies ofthese have survived and deserve reissue) And Helen the oldest of thegirls got married in March 1950 to a young man named Glenn Jones

In June 1950 the group with Atkins got an offer to join the Opry and

16 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

moved to Nashville Things got complicated in the next few years as theother two girls got married as well Anita chose a young hot fiddle playernamed Dale Potter while June said yes to a young singer she had met inKnoxville who had just joined the Opry Carl Smith While the three sis-ters still got together with their mother for recording sessions and radioshows each began to be interested in a solo career June created a bandcalled the Bashful Rascals and made her first solo try on RCA in August1950 with a single called ldquoBashful Rascalrdquo At the same session Anita triedher first solo with a song called ldquoSomebodyrsquos Cryingrdquo Helen tried herhand with the new independent label Tennessee cutting a duet withOpry announcer Grant Turner (ldquoHeavenrsquos Decisionrdquo) another one withDon Davis (ldquoSparrow in the Treetoprdquo) and a couple of solo efforts(including ldquoFiddling Aroundrdquo) In February 1952 all of them signed withColumbia where they would largely remain for the next two decades

In 1951 Anita also began working as a duet partner to RCArsquos hottestcurrent star Hank Snow their version of ldquoBluebird Islandrdquo reachedNumber Four on the Top 10 charts A little later Anita would becomeduet partners with singers like Johnny Darrell and Waylon Jennings In1955 RCA producer Steve Sholes paired her with Rita Robbins and KittyWellsrsquos daughter Ruby to form a rockabilly trio called Nita Rita andRuby No big hits resulted from the experiment but they did some ofthe earliest female rockabilly and recorded songs that ranged frompieces by the Everly Brothers to Cindy Walker (ldquoGive Me Loverdquo)

Mother Maybelle continued to work on the package shows includ-ing several of Snowrsquos where she met and took a shine to a young ElvisPresley June recalls ldquoShersquod drive all night getting us in from some-where and we would be exhausted but she was wanting to go bowlingat some all-night lanerdquo By the early 1960s Maybelle had been discov-ered by the young college audiences of the ldquofolk revivalrdquo and she beganto make some solo appearances at places like the Newport Folk Festivalperforming the older songs and conducting guitar and autoharp work-shops (She had begun to play the autoharp after moving to Nashville)June for her part took her solo career in a different direction shemoved to New York to studying acting with Elia Kazan and eventuallylanded acting roles in TV shows like Gunsmoke and Jim Bowie By 1963after a second marriage to Rip Nix she had joined Johnny Cashrsquos show

Throughout the 1950s labels like Columbia and RCA kept cuttingsingles of the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle as a group and as indi-viduals When AP Carter died in 1960 Maybelle felt comfortable in tak-ing the name ldquothe Carter Familyrdquo for her organization and in 1962 usedit on the cover of their first real LP The Carter Family Album on MercuryMany of these early LPs were filled with versions of old Carter songs

17The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family

from the rsquo20s and rsquo30s though a superb 1963 solo album by Anita con-tained a bevy of new songs done by modern Nashville tunesmithsmdashincluding the first recording of ldquoRing of Firerdquo In 1963 the CarterFamily as a group joined Johnny Cashrsquos successful road show and cele-brated the event by cutting their first Columbia record ldquoKeep on theSunny Siderdquo (with Johnny Cash) June and Johnny married in 1968

Albums of all sorts now began to flow during the late rsquo60s and rsquo70smany with the full family some featuring Maybelle some featuring oneof the girls some featuring other groups like Flatt and Scruggs and theNitty Gritty Dirt Band By 1974 yet a third generation of Carters wasmaking its mark with the Columbia LP Three Generations Junersquos daugh-ter Carlene started a solo career in 1978 achieving great success inrecent years Maybelle herself began struggling with arthritis and a typeof Parkinsonrsquos disease and by the mid-1970s her legendary energy wasbeginning to run down There was time for one last album CountryrsquosFirst Family cut at the House of Cash studio in February 1976 it was anengaging mix of old Carter songs and new Nashville ones Maybelledied on October 28 1978 knowing that there were new generations ofCarters to carry on the work

18 Cl a ssi c Cou n t r y

• Cover and Prelims
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Carter Family