Tunes for Twangers
Music 305 A
A History of Country Music
Module III
Early Giants
The Carter Family & Jimmie Rodgers
A Brief Preamble
….. as indicated in Module 2 – on August 1, 1927 the
Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers recorded for Victor and Ralph. Peer in what
are known as the famous Bristol Sessions.
The “sessions” actually went on for ten days during which time Peer made
76 recordings by 19 different groups and artists, totaling nearly 80
individuals. Even though today we primarily remember the Carter Family and
Jimmie Rodgers from these sessions – at the time, Ernest Van “Pop” Stoneman was the biggest “name” and most-experienced of the
rural artists to record – and he recorded more than any other artist. Because
of the importance of these recording sessions, in 1998 Congress passed a
resolution recognizing
The Carter Family
To call the Carter Family “the first
family of country music” as many do, is a historical truth. Not only were they
key players at the fames
The Interesting Influence of Lesley “Esley” Riddle
Between 1927 and 1943 the Carter Family made over 300 recordings and although
did not travel and tour like their contemporaries [particularly Jimmie Rodger]
sold hundreds of thousands [millions] of recordings. They are perhaps best
known for Wildwood Flower, Keep on the Sunny Side, Will You Miss Me When I am
Gone, Worried Man Blues, My Dixie Darlin’ and Will
the Circle Be Unbroken.
Listening Examples
Can the Circle Be Unbroken
Wildwood Flower
Keep on the Sunny Side
Worried Man’s Blues
On the Rock Where Moses Stood
Single Girl,
My Clinch Mountain Home
Kissing is a Crime
Carter Family
Biographical Sketch
- A. P. Carter 1891-1960
- Sara Dougherty Carter 1898-1979 [wife of A.P. until divorce]
- Maybelle Addington
Carter “Mother Maybelle” 1909-1978 [married A.P.’s
brother Ezra]
- A.P. family farm, father played banjo, mother sang old folk ballads, uncle
taught him shape-notes
- A.P. some fiddle – mostly sang and “ran” family business – “song doctor”
- Maybelle guitar – “Carter lick” – thumb brush
technique
- Sara auto-harp
- never wealthy
- Carter Family fold
- Carter Family through the years
The Carter Family by John Lilly [Native Ground Music]
Alvin Pleasant Delaney Carter, (A. P.)
was born in December of 1891 in
By all accounts, A.P. was a strange, complicated man. His body was afflicted
with a slight but constant tremble, and his mind was full of dreams and
ponderous thoughts. According to Janette Carter, "Daddy always had more than
one idea in his head. You never knew what he was thinking."
He was always interested in music but he was also interested in trees. These
two came together one day in 1914. A.P. traveled over Clinch Mountain to Copper
Creek to sell some fruit tree saplings to his uncle, Milburn Nickles. As he approached the cabin, he was deeply moved
and forever changed by what he found there-a beautiful dark-haired woman
singing sweetly and playing the autoharp. This was Sara Dougherty, an orphaned
niece whom the Nickles raised. Uncle Milburn was a
fiddler and there were often music gatherings at their home where young Sara
played the banjo, autoharp, and guitar.
A.P. and Sara got married in 1915, setting up home and a farm in Maces Spring,
now called Hiltons, Virginia. In addition to performing at church suppers and
school houses, A.P. and Sara enjoyed gathering with family and friends in
various homes to play music for sheer enjoyment. Among the many talented family
members in that area was Sara's younger cousin, Maybelle
Addington, who, like Sara, played guitar, banjo,
autoharp, and sang. Maybelle, who eventually married
A.P.'s cousin, Ezra, soon joined in with A.P. and Sara. The three of them began
building a repertoire and a reputation that would one day stretch out beyond
even A.P.'s wildest imagination.
The Carter's local good name was soon spread to
Victor recording executive, Ralph Peer, recounted his first impressions:
"They wandered in. He's dressed in overalls and the women are country
women from way back there. They look like hillbillies. But as soon as I heard
Sara's voice, that was it. I knew it was going to be wonderful!"
Equally striking was Maybelle's guitar work, and the
songs and arrangements which A.P. had worked on for many years. As a unit, they
presented a truly unique combination of rich mountain tradition and eccentric
personal style. Sara and Maybelle's harmony floated
comfortably over A.P.'s trembling, sometimes spooky, bass voice. The guitars
and occasional autoharp created a parallel instrumental sound with harp-like
strumming and resounding melody notes played by Maybelle
on the bass strings.
"Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow" was the first song they recorded.
It was a 19th century song which Sara and Maybelle
had both known since childhood. This and the remaining five songs recorded at
their session are available on the Country Music Foundation reissue The
Ralph Peer's enthusiasm, brisk record sales, and some cash in hand were like
gas on the flames for A.P.'s burning desire to take his family and their music
as far as they could go. Always a song collector, A.P. now became a man
obsessed. According to Charles Hirshberg:
He began carrying pieces of yellow paper with him wherever he went and he went
everywhere. All through the mountains he roamed, selling fruit trees, but
always with another end in mind: songs. And he seemed to have an uncanny
ability to find them. Says (daughter) Gladys: "When I was a little girl,
he'd take me with him sometimes. We'd walk along till he seen a house up on a
hill or on some riverbank, and he'd say, 'Well, I'm going up to that house.
They'll know some songs. 'There'd be some old song they knew the tune to, or
the chorus. Daddy'd write down the words, take it
home and work it up. Write some more verses, change it around. He usually had
to have something to get him started."
The following spring, Ralph Peer brought the Carter Family to the company
studios in Camden, New Jersey and cut twelve more songs including their theme
song, "Keep on the Sunny Side" and another tune now synonymous with
the group, "Wildwood Flower."
Artistically, the Carters were flying high. Economically and emotionally these
were trying times. Recording and performing did not bring in much money, and
A.P.'s erratic personal habits contributed to stress at home. In 1929, A.P.
sought work in
Resilience is a trademark of any great family, however, and the Carters somehow
shrugged off these set-backs. They not only continued to record and perform incredible
music, but they also grew and expanded as a family with A.P. and Sara
reportedly getting along better after their separation, and Maybelle
and Ezra raising three very talented daughters in the Carter tradition.
They changed record labels in 1935, rerecording much of their material for the
American Recording Company (ARC). The following summer they began a two-year
association with Decca during which they waxed 60 more songs, and were at a
performance peak. Unlike ARC, Decca insisted on fresh material. A.P. was never
short on songs and these two years of recording (1936-1938) produced an
impressive body of work. MCA has recently reissued many of these recordings on
a new CD produced by the Country Music Foundation called "The Carter
Family: Country
On the heels of this recording watershed, the Carter Family received their
widest public exposure to date through the wonders of Border Radio in
When Dr. John Romulus Brinkley's snake oil empire came down around his ears in
1942, XERA folded and a page was turned for the Carter Family. Despite a final
six months together on WBT radio in
Mother Maybelle, as she would henceforth be known,
was no longer the younger cousin, harmony singer, and guitar picker. She was
now the matriarch of the group, and became a pioneer of the autoharp. According
to John Atkins in Stars of Country Music, (edited by Bill C. Malone and Judith McCulloh,
Anita, Helen, and June were great entertainers, treating their audience to fine
singing and musicianship, mountain dancing, and lively down-home humor. They
became members of the Grand Ole Opry in
Back home in
Mother Maybelle's branch of the family tree found a
rich avenue of expression through their
In the folk world, Carter music has thrived equally well thanks to Maybelle's many personal appearances at festivals up until
her death in 1978. Further attention was brought to the Carter Family by such
popular folk performers as Joan Baez, Mike Seeger, and Doc Watson. Woody
Guthrie's anthem, "This Land is Your Land" used a Carter melody from
"Darling Pal of Mine." Nearly every bluegrass, old-time, or folk
singer of the past 50 years, famous or not, has more than one Carter Family
song up his or her sleeve.
Here is where the largest piece of the Carter legend lies. According to
historian Nolan Porterfield, in his article entitled "Jimmie Rodgers
Visits the Carter Familv" in Country: The Music
and the Musician (published by the Country Music Foundation/Abbeyville
Press). "Among the treasures bestowed by the Carters, you'll find: the
simplest close harmony yet discovered, so pure it's scary; that famous,
intricate Carter guitar lick, widely imitated but never improved on; and their
ultimate gift to the world, a vast repertoire of true Anglo-American folk
music, laboriously gathered in bits and pieces across the folkland,
much of it masterfully arranged and restored ("worked up" was A.P.'s
term) to fresh vigor, saved from oblivion and passed on to its rightful
heirs."
If, as many suggest,
country music is the commercial manifestation of American folk music, then the
Carter Family are country music incarnate. By combing the hills, the hymnals,
their own memories, and every other source imaginable and available, A.P. and
the Carter Family took the songs of their mountain community and presented them
to the world at large in a way that millions of people could understand, love,
and call their own. It is unclear whether A.P., Sara, or Maybelle
ever made up a single song from scratch. However, they found creativity in
identifying, reworking, and rearranging fragments, lost licks, and song ideas
into a formidable repertoire which outstrips the catalogs of even the most
prolific of songwriters.
Add to the songs already mentioned "You Are My Flower," "Hello
Stranger," "My
Perhaps their most famous song is, "Will the Circle be Unbroken." As
the Carter Family members and their music continue into their eighth decade,
their creativity, tenacity, values, and beauty assure that for them, and for
the traditions they represent, the circle is indeed strong and remains happily
unbroken.
Mother Maybelle’s
L5 Gibson Guitar
MOTHER MAYBELLE CARTER AND HER
PRICELESS GUITAR
Guitars are humble instruments that have been
around for hundreds of years, accessible to rich and poor, playable by amateurs
and virtuosos. Perhaps more than any other instrument, the guitar has shaped
music around the world.
In many ways, Mother Maybelle Carter provided the
guitarist’s alphabet with the music she made on a 1928 Gibson, a guitar that is
now one of the most historically significant instruments in American music. Her
signature scratch—a technique for playing a bass-string melody accompanied by
brushed chords on the treble strings—has charmed generations around the world.
Carter is credited with single-handedly introducing the guitar as a lead
instrument in country music, which places her among a handful of blues, country
and other artists whose playing style and instrumentation provided the
foundation for nearly every genre of modern popular music.
“If
it hadn’t been for Mother Maybelle,” said country
music columnist and broadcast personality Hazel Smith, “Jimi
Hendrix might have been a banjo player.” Today, the guitar has eclipsed banjos
and fiddles as the dominant instrument in country music.
Born Maybelle Addington in Nickelsville, Virginia, in 1909, Carter grew up in a rural
family that, like many other families in the southern mountains of Virginia,
spent much of their time playing music for social reasons. A child when her
cousin Sara married A. P. Carter, Maybelle grew up to
marry A. P.’s brother, Eck. She was widely held to be the family’s finest
instrumentalist. By 1926, she and Eck would join Sara and A. P. in Maces
Springs, Virginia.Maybelle Guitar
Always in search of odd jobs and extra income, A. P. began booking Sara, Maybelle and himself to perform at area schools and church
socials, eventually prompting him to contact record companies. Soon, the trio
came to the attention of the Victor Talking Machine Company.
Victor’s session organizer, Ralph Peer, invited the Carter Family to Bristol,
Tennessee, for their first recording session in August 1927. The sessions also
included recordings by Jimmie Rodgers, the Tenneva
Ramblers, the Stoneman Family and many other mountain
musicians.
The Carter Family was a valuable link to country music’s folk roots, while the
Maybelle Carter
purchased her now legendary guitar, the top model available from Gibson at the
time, shortly after the seminal Bristol sessions. The Carter Family went on to
circulate a body of songs that still endures in the repertoires of modern
musicians. More often than not, songs popularized by the Carter Family are
among the first to be tackled by beginning guitarists.
Peer and Victor were so pleased with the Carters's
recordings that the Carter Family recorded some 300 takes of 250 titles over
the next fourteen years. The incredible volume of material includes
now-evergreen songs like “Little Darling Pal of Mine,” “Keep on the Sunny
Side,” “Wildwood Flower” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”
After the Carter Family dissolved as a group, Maybelle
eventually formed a band with her daughters, Helen, Anita and June. The late
sixties revival of the original Carter Family’s music brought the group the
acclaim that had eluded them until that time. The Original Carter Family was
inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame® in 1970.
Maybelle used the Gibson L-5 for nearly every recording and
personal appearance that followed the Bristol sessions. While on tour with the
Carter Family in the 1950s, shortly before he rose to wider acclaim in
"Love Me Tender," Elvis Presley often borrowed the Gibson from Carter
when he broke a string on his own guitar.
The Gibson has a l6-inch wide body, narrow snakehead peghead, maple neck and ebony fingerboard with white
binding and dot inlay. Originally set with banjo pegs, the guitar was
customized over the years with replacement tuners, pickguard
and tailpiece.
Carter’s guitar, which is thought to have been a mail-order purchase, was in
the care of the Carter family for 75 years. It was loaned to the Country Music
Hall of Fame® and Museum in 1998 and first exhibited on October 23, the 20th
anniversary of Carter’s death.
Befitting the instrument’s iconic stature, it was the last artifact to be
ceremoniously escorted into the building during the Museum’s May 2001 grand
opening ceremony. It remained on display in the permanent exhibition, Sing Me
Back Home: A Journey Through Country Music, until
reclaimed by its owner earlier this year.
In late May 2004, the anonymous owner consigned the instrument to Gruhn Guitars, a Nashville store specializing in the sale
of vintage stringed instruments. It was put on sale for $575,000.
The uncertain fate of the guitar made national headlines and turned up key
truths about the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum: We have friends in
many places, friends we don’t know about and friends who’ve only recently
learned about us.
In newspaper editorials, e-mail, phone calls and visits to the Museum, those
friends stepped forward to volunteer in the drive to keep the Carter guitar in
the Museum collection, thus preserving a part of America’s cultural heritage
for future generations to enjoy. Both the owner and Gruhn
had always expressed their desire to see the guitar remain at the Museum.
In late June, Murfreesboro philanthropist Bob McLean pledged to make a
restricted gift to enable the Museum’s purchase of the guitar. McLean’s
generosity added the priceless instrument to the Museum’s collection to be
preserved for years to come. This happy ending represents a victory for
beleaguered museums around the world.
Jimmie Rodgers [James Charles
Rodgers ~ The Singing Brakeman] 1897-1933
Biographical Sketch
- Father of Country Music
- first inductee in the Country Music Hall of Fame
- 111 recorded songs
- born in Meridian, MS
- mother died when he was 4, father – a railroad man took care of him
- picked up songs from black workers who also taught him to play the banjo and
guitar
- worked fourteen years on the railroad – tuberculosis
- medicine show, moved to Asheville [to help with lung disease]
- worked as a detective until met R. Peer
- Bristol Sessions
- touring
- showman
- at time of death – twenty million records sold
- influence on others can scarcely be exaggerated
Before he decided upon a professional
entertainment career, Jimmie Rodgers was subjected to almost every conceivable
type of musical influence the South possessed, with the possible exception of
gospel music, since he was never known to be a religious or church-going
person. [Country Music
Country Artists acknowledging influence of Jimmie Rodgers on their work …..
Hank Williams [Sr.], Gene Autry, Ernest Tubb, Hank
Snow, Lefty Frizzell, Bill Monroe, Johnny Cash, Merle
Haggard, Tanya Tucker and Dolly Parton
His yodel wasn't merely sugar-coating on
the song, it was as important as the lyric, mournful and plaintive or happy and
carefree, depending on a song's emotional content. His instrumental
accompaniment consisted sometimes of his guitar only, while at other times a
full jazz band (horns and all) backed him up. Country fans could have asked for
no better hero/star -- someone who thought what they thought, felt what they
felt, and sang about the common person honestly and beautifully. In his last
recording session, Rodgers was so racked and
ravaged by tuberculosis that a cot had to be set up in the studio, so he could
rest before attempting that one song more. No wonder Rodgers is to this day
loved by country music fans. [CMT Web]
Listening Examples
Peach Pickin’ Time in Georgia
Blue Yodel – T for Texas
Blue Yodel #10 [twelve “sequel” yodels to T for Texas]
Pistol Packin’ Papa
In the Jailhouse Now
During his short lifetime and a recording
career that lasted only six years, Jimmie Rodgers became known as “America’s
Blue Yodeler” and as “The Singing Brakeman”. Finally, in 1961 he was officially
recognized as “The Father of Country Music” when he was inducted into the
Country Music Hall of Fame as a charter member. Each of these endearing and
well-deserved titles illustrates one of American Music’s greatest icons and helps
us remember Rodgers’ legendary persona, as well as his unforgettable singing.
James Charles Rodgers was born in Meridian, Mississippi on the September 8,
1897. He began learning music at an early age, showing talent as well as a
passion for entertaining and performing. His father Aaron worked on the
railroad as a section foreman on the