⭐️ howie roak

The Carter Family

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✪ The Carter Family is an American folk music group which has spanned three generations. The first & original generation of the Carter Family recorded and performed between 1927 and 1956. Regarded as one of the most important music groups of the early 20th Century, they had a profound influence on the modern development of bluegrass, country, southern gospel, pop, and rock, as well as the American Folk Revival in the 1960s.

The Carter Family was also the first vocal group to become popular country music stars; and were among the first groups to record commercially produced country music. Their first recordings were made in Bristol, Tennessee for the Victor Talking Machine Company under producer Ralph Peer on August 1, 1927; the day before country singer Jimmie Rodgers would also make his initial recordings for Victor under Peer.

The original , first generation group consisted of Sara Carter & her husband A. P. Carter along with her sister-in-law Maybelle Carter. Maybelle was Sara’s first cousin, and was married to A. P.’s brother Ezra Carter (Eck). All three were born and raised in southwest Virginia where they grew up immersed in the tight harmonies of mountain gospel music and shape note singing. The latter style dated to the early 19th Century and Gospel revivals in the South.

Throughout the group’s career, Sara Carter sang lead vocals and played rhythm guitar or autoharp. Maybelle sang harmony and played lead guitar. AP sang harmony and background vocals. Occasionally he would sing lead. Maybelle’s distinctive guitar-playing style became a hallmark of Country music. Her Carter Scratch (a method for playing both lead and rhythm on the guitar) has since become one of the most copied styles of guitar playing.

The success of the Carter Family’s recordings of songs such as “Can the Circle Be Unbroken, Wildwood Flower” and “Keep on the Sunny Side” have become Country standardswhich were later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The Carter Family was inducted in 2005; after being the first group inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970. 

The Carter Family made their first recordings on August 1, 1927. The previous day, A.P. Carter persuaded his wife Sara Carter and his sister-in-law Maybelle to make the journey from Maces Spring, Virginia, to Bristol, Tennessee, to audition for record producer Ralph Peer. Peer was seeking new talent for the relatively embryonic recording industry. The initial sessions are part of what are now called the Bristol Sessions, and took place in the empty second floor warehouse of the Taylor-Christian Hat Company. The band received $50 for each song they recorded that day, plus a half-cent royalty for every copy sold. On November 4, 1927, the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA Victor) released a double-sided 78 rpm record of the group performing “Wandering Boy” and “Poor Orphan Child.” On December 2, 1928, Victor released “The Storms Are on the Ocean” and “Single Girl, Married Girl,” which became very popular.

By the end of 1930, the Carter Family had sold 300,000 records in the United States. Realizing he would benefit financially with each new song he collected and copyrighted, A.P. traveled around southwestern Virginia to find songs to record. He also composed original new songs. In June 1931, the Carters did a recording session in Benton, Kentucky, along with Jimmie Rodgers.

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The family spent time in their final years from 1938-1941 in Texas, where they had a twice-daily program on the border radio station XERA (later XERF) in Villa Acuña (now Ciudad Acuña, Mexico), across the border from Del Rio, Texas.

The second generation of the Carter Family were billed as the Carter Sisters; and consisted of Maybelle Carter and her daughters June Carter Cash, Helen Carter, and Anita Carter. Each sister played her own an instrument, with June dressed as a pioneer as a front-man. Formed during World War II, the group continued to record and perform into the 1990s. Maybelle and Ezra named the band “The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle” and recorded under that title for two record labels RCA and Columbia. Maybelle wanted her daughters to be the face of the band.

In the 1939–40 season, the children joined the original group for radio performances in San Antonio, Texas. Here the programs were prerecorded and distributed to multiple border radio stations. In the fall of 1942, the Carters moved their program to WBT radio in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a one-year contract. They occupied the sunrise slot, with the program airing between 5:15 and 6:15 a.m.

The Carter Sisters performed a mix of traditional songs of the original Carter Family with pop, gospel, and vaudeville comedy. Each daughter made her own contribution to the band.

• Helen: vocals, guitar, and accordion
• Anita: vocals, guitar, and bass fiddle
• June: vocals, autoharp, guitar, banjo, dance, and comedy (she could carry a tune but struggled with pitch problems and soon began to focus more on her comedic addition to the group.)

The original Carter Family disbanded in 1944. However, Maybelle continued to perform with her daughters Anita Carter, June Carter, and Helen Carter. The group recorded on three labels (RCA Victor, Columbia and Coronet) billed as “The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle.”

Chet Atkins joined them playing electric guitar in 1949 at WNOX radio in Knoxville, Tennessee. He moved with them in October 1949 over to KWTO radio in Springfield, Missouri.

Now officially known as The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle with Chet Atkins, the group released its first record on February 2, 1949, produced in Atlanta, Georgia through RCA Victor Records. The group recorded many singles in the 1950s. The sisters also individually released occasional single records but none of their recordings in this era were particularly successful, despite their fame and popularity as a concert act.

They performed with famous names such as Elvis Presley, Carl Smith (June’s husband at the time), Ernest Tubb, and Johnny Cash and spent roughly ten years working the Grand Ole Opry as well as on various other radio broadcasts. They became members of the Opry in the early 1950s. June also began making frequent solo performances in concert and on television during this era.

Opry management didn’t want the Carters to bring Chet when they were offered a regular spot on the Grand Ole Opry but Ezra Carter (their father and manager) insisted that Chet come with them, as he was a part of their band now. Finally the Opry management agreed and Chet went with them when they were hired by WSM and the Grand Ole Opry; their first day was May 29, 1950. Chet worked with them when they did “personals” off and on for 8 years, but mostly on the live Grand Ole Opry performances. A.P., Sara, and their children Joe and Janette also recorded 3 albums in the 1950s under the name of The A.P. Carter Family.

After the death of A.P. Carter in 1960, Mother Maybelle Carter and the Carter Sisters began using the name “The Carter Family” for their act during the 1960s and 1970s. Maybelle and Sara briefly reunited, recorded a reunion album (An Historic Reunion), and toured in the 1960s during the height of folk music’s popularity.

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The act continued and actually enjoyed its greatest success in the early 1970s. June’s marriage to Cash brought the Carter Sisters regular appearances on television’s The Johnny Cash Show and the first major chart hit records of their career. In 1973, the act won “Favorite Country Vocal Group” on the American Music Awards: a surprise victory over the more commercially successful Statler Brothers (another group closely associated with Cash) and The Osborne Brothers.

In 1987, reunited sisters June Carter Cash and Helen and Anita Carter, along with June’s daughter Carlene Carter, and appeared as the Carter Family. They were featured on a 1987 television episode of Austin City Limits, along with June’s husband Johnny Cash.

The Carter Family name was revived for a third time under the name Carter Family III. It was a project of descendants of the original Carter Family, John Carter Cash (grandson of Maybelle Carter, son of June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash) and Dale Jett (grandson of A.P. and Sara Carter).

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As important to country music as the family’s repertoire of songs was Maybelle’s style of guitar playing. She developed her innovative guitar technique largely in isolation. Her style is widely known today as the “Carter scratch.”

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock described the Carter Family musical style as a combination of simple harmonies and unique guitar-based arrangements. Before the Carter family’s recordings, the guitar was rarely used as a lead or solo instrument among musicians. Maybelle’s interweaving of a melodic line on the bass strings with intermittent strums is now a staple of steel string guitar technique.

“By the end of the twenties, Maybelle Carter scratch … was the most widely imitated guitar style in music. Nobody did as much to popularize the guitar, because from the beginning, her playing was distinctive as any voice.”

— The Bristol Sessions: Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music (2005)

• A.P. Carter: Died November 7, 1960, in Maces Spring, Virginia.
• Sara Dougherty Carter: Died January 8, 1979, in Lodi, California; buried in Pineview Memorial Gardens, Virginia.
• Maybelle Addington Carter: Died October 23, 1978, in Nashville, Tennessee; buried in

Other Notable Family Members

• June Carter Cash: Died May 15, 2003, in Nashville, Tennessee.
• Anita Carter: Died July 29, 1999, in Nashville, Tennessee.
• Helen Carter: Died June 2, 1998, in Nashville, Tennessee

The Carter Family was the first group inducted to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970 and were given the nickname “The First Family of Country Music.” In 1993, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative postage stamp honoring A.P., Sara, and Maybelle. ✪