Ralph Peer along with two recording engineers began touring the southern United States in July of 1927, hoping to find musicians to promote as commercial artists. On August 1, 1927 In Bristol, Tennessee, Peer struck musical gold when he recorded The Carter Family and their collection of traditional, Anglo-American music.
The Carter family grew up in rural Virginia. A.P. (Alvin Pleasant) Carter, who married Sara Dougherty on June 18, 1915, played fiddle and sang bass. Sara, who had a lovely alto voice, played guitar and Autoharp. Maybelle Addington, who married A.P.’s brother Ezra Carter in 1926, played Autoharp, banjo, guitar.
Maybelle's Innovative Guitar Style
The trios’ pure, sweet harmonies combined with Maybelle’s inventive guitar picking became the backbone of The Carter Family sound. Maybelle came from a musical family and her self-taught guitar technique became known as the Carter Scratch. She played the melody and bass lines with her thumb using a thumb pick, while maintaining the rhythm with her middle and index fingers brushing the higher strings. Budding and established guitarist all over the world, including Chet Aktins, have copied her style.
A.P. was a fruit tree salesman who traversed the mountains and countryside of Virginia. During his travels he also collected many traditional tunes played and sung by the hill country people. He had a knack for reworking the songs to fit the Carter Family repertoire.
First Performances of the Carter Family
The Carter Family began by performing at churches, schools and neighborhood gatherings near their home in the Clinch Mountain area of Virginia. They had been performing together for about ten years when they made that fateful recording for Ralph Peers in Bristol, Tennessee. Peers so was impressed with the Carter’s music, he immediately recorded and released six of their songs.
Ralph Peers soon realized the market was ripe for the homespun, traditional music interpreted so well by the Carter Family. The Carter songs reminiscent of home, hearth, family and church brought back memories of simpler times. Although most of the music was comprised of reworked, traditional, mountain music, Maybelle and Sara did write a few of their own Carter songs.
Carter Songs Recorded
In Camden, New Jersey on May 27, 1928, they recorded three songs that became Carter Family classics: Keep on the Sunny Side, Can the Circle be Unbroken, and Maybelle’s signature, Wildwood Flower.
In 1938, the Carter Family moved to Texas to do a twice daily program on the powerful, border radio station XERA based in Mexico. They also began recording for Decca records. Their popularity and record sales soared due to the widened audience of the Mexician based radio station. Afterwards, they moved to Charlotte, North Carolina to work at radio station WBT.
In 1932, after years of a marital strife, A.P. and Sara Carter separated and in 1933, they divorced. The group continued to perform together as the Carter Family for another ten years until they finally disbanded for good in 1942.
Maybelle Carter continued the family musical tradition by performing with her daughters, Anita, June and Helen as Mother Maybelle and The Carter Sisters.
The original Carter Family left an unmatched, collection of traditional music that would have been lost to the world, if not for A.P. Carter’s meticulous cataloging and the Carter Family’s musically, gifted interpretation of those songs.
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