A. P. Carter

Highly Appreciated

ALVIN PLEASANT DELANEY CARTER (A. P. CARTER)
 
 
A. P. Carter  (December 15, 1891 – November 7, 1960) was an American musician and founding member of The Carter Family, one of the most notable acts in the history of country music.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 

For many years, I thought of A. P. Carter of the Carter Family as an incredible songwriter; his name appears as the writer for dozens if not hundreds of classic country, folk and gospel songs, but I found out later that he was actually acting more as an archivist or folklorist. 

 

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I first learned of the Carter Family when I saw original member “Mother Maybelle” Carter joined by her children, June Carter Cash (Johnny Cash’s wife by that time), Helen Carter and Anita Carter – “the Carter Sisters” – on television and on the cover of a record album that I cannot seem to locate online.  The group began using the name the Carter Family following the death of family patriarch A. P. Carter in 1960, so the term the Original Carter Family is often used to refer to the legendary group. 

 

This newer incarnation has a makeup that one would expect of a “family” singing group; there have actually been many singing groups that are composed of various members of the Carter Family.  The classic line-up of the Carter Family is somewhat unusual in this regard, being made up of Alvin P. Carter and his wife Sara Dougherty Carter, plus their sister-in-law Maybelle Addington Carter; additionally, Sara and Maybelle were first cousins. 

 

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The entry on the Carter Family in Allmusic (by David Vinopal) begins:  “The most influential group in country music history, the Carter Family switched the emphasis from hillbilly instrumentals to vocals, made scores of their songs part of the standard country music canon, and made a style of guitar playing, ‘Carter picking’, the dominant technique for decades.  Along with Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family were among the first country music stars.  Comprised of a gaunt, shy gospel quartet member named Alvin P. Carter and two reserved country girls – his wife, Sara [Dougherty Carter], and their sister-in-law, Maybelle [Addington Carter] – the Carter Family sang a pure, simple harmony that influenced not only the numerous other family groups of the ’30s and the ’40s, but folk, bluegrass, and rock musicians like Woody GuthrieBill Monroethe Kingston TrioDoc WatsonBob Dylan, and Emmylou Harris, to mention just a few.  It’s unlikely that bluegrass music would have existed without the Carter Family.” 

 

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When I came across the attractive album pictured above, The Famous Carter Family by the Carter Family and turned the album over on the back, I could scarcely believe what I was reading.  Besides the usual credits, the listing of the songs also gave the dates when they were recorded:  all within a two- or three-week period in 1928.  And the songwriter in all cases was A. P. Carter.  Could any one man really have written all of these incredible songs? 

 

One of the songs, “Wildwood Flower” has perhaps the loveliest melody in all of country music.  At the time, I knew the song only by reputation, and mainly because of “Wildwood Weed” (1974) – which is basically about marijuana – a #7 hit song by Jim Stafford that mentions the song:  “The name of this song is ‘The Wildwood Flower’ / Now ‘The Wildwood Flower’ is an old country classic / It gained a whole new popularity / The song isn’t any more popular / But the flower is doin’ real good.”  The song Wildwood Weed was written and originally recorded way back in 1964 by country singer and comedian Don Bowman.  

 

But that was just the beginning.  One of the A. P. Carter songs on The Famous Carter Family is so timeless that it is hard to imagine anyone writing it:  “Keep on the Sunny Side”.  There are three bonafide classic gospel songs:  “Can the Circle be Unbroken”, “Lonesome Valley”, and “Gospel Ship”.  Another song was one I knew as a Woody Guthrie number, “Worried Man Blues”.  The other songs I was not familiar with but quickly learned to love as much as the others.  I gathered up a few more Carter Family albums and learned what I could about them. 

 

I started correcting people that the song Will the Circle be Unbroken is actually named Can the Circle be Unbroken.  Eventually I came across the “Will” title so much that I decided that I needed to look it up.  It turns out, according to Wikipedia, that Can the Circle be Unbroken was reworked by A. P. Carter from the hymn “Will the Circle be Unbroken?” that dates from 1907

 

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At a later date, I decided to look in Wikipedia to see if they had a list of songs that were written by A. P. Carter.  Well, they did, but it was not at all what I expected:  There are only 4 songs on the list.  This was the real story according to the Wikipedia article on A. P. Carter:  “Carter was known for traveling extensively throughout the country and collecting and blending songs, particularly from Appalachian musicians.  Some of the songs became so closely identified with A. P. Carter that he has been popularly, but mistakenly, credited with writing them.  For example, ‘Keep on the Sunny Side of Life’ was published in 1901 with the words being credited to Ada Blenkhorn and the music credited to Howard Entwisle, and ‘The Meeting in the Air’ has been published giving credit for music and words to I. G. Martin." 

 

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It pained me in the beginning to learn this about A. P. Carter, but I have gotten over it.  Having such an outsized ear for great songs, and then finding and recording these songs for the rest of us is enough even if he never wrote a note of his own.  In so doing, A. P. Carter went a step beyond what Alan Lomax was doing in actually arranging and recording these songs by his own singing group. 

 

Songwriting credits were not handled so scrupulously back then anyway, and those practices continued at least through the end of the 1960’s

 

(February 2015)

 

Last edited: March 22, 2021