“Mother” Maybelle Carter (May 10, 1909 – October 23, 1978) was an American country musician. She is best known as a member of the historic Carter Family act in the 1920s and 1930s and also as a member of Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters. (More from Wikipedia)
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.
The entry on the Carter Family in Allmusic (by David Vinopal) includes: “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 Guthrie, Bill Monroe, the Kingston Trio, Doc Watson, Bob 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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This would be a good time to relate my recent purchase of a one-of-a-kind, three-disc album called Will the Circle be Unbroken (1972). Unlike nearly all of the other rock and country collaborations that I know about, in this case the rockers hand the keys off to country music legends and let them drive. Ostensibly (or even technically) a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album, Wikipedia calls the album a “collaboration from many famous bluegrass and country-western players, including Roy Acuff, ‘Mother’ Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, Pete ‘Oswald’ Kirby, Norman Blake, Jimmy Martin, and others. It also introduced fiddler Vassar Clements to a wider audience.”
(February 2015)
