week of 3/5/03
 
 
 

The Carters’ contributions to early country
By Bruce Steinbicker

Very few people alive today could have heard the radio broadcasts and 78 rpm records of the original Carter Family. Now we have the opportunity to know these pioneers of commercial country music through an important book, Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music by Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg (Simon and Schuster, 2002).

Carter music was a real family affair. A. P. Carter was married to Sara Carter who was a first cousin of Maybelle Carter, the third member of the group. Maybelle married A. P.’s brother, Ezra. Sara divorced A.P. and married his first cousin, Coy Bays. When the trio split for good in Charlotte in 1943, Maybelle kept the Carter Family music going for over three decades with her daughters — Helen, June, and Anita.

The Carter men were from Maces Springs, Va., in Poor Valley, about 20 miles west of Bristol. The women came from Rich Valley (honest) on the other side of Clinch Mountain.

The Carters got their chance to record when Ralph Peer came to Bristol to make field recordings of mountain musicians in the summer of 1927. A newspaper ad invited locals to record for the Victor Talking Machine Co. Those whose songs were released on record would be paid $50 per song, lots of money in those days.

The Carters, with Maybelle eight months pregnant, took all day to ford the Holston River, fix some flat tires and get to Bristol. That night they cut four sides and they did two more in the morning. They headed home $300 richer. Peer, already highly successful in the fledgling record industry, said the Carters were good, but they didn’t seem to know how good they were. He knew. He wisely gave them a contract with royalties, uncommon at that time, and copyrighted all the songs in A. P.’s name.

The Carters never dreamed that their visit with the Victor Talking Machine Co. would become known as the Bristol Sessions. They participated in the birthing of commercial country music. Maybelle and Sara had beautiful voices and both were excellent guitar and autoharp players. A. P.’s bass voice was heard on some songs, but on many of the records only the women played. His major contribution was his non-stop traveling through the mountains to collect songs from the hill folks for future records. He wrote some, too.

Peer brought the Carters to the Victor studios in Camden, N.J., in May 1928 to cut 12 sides. Most of these songs became classics which have been recorded over and over by many artists in the past three quarters of a century. Perhaps the most famous song from the session is “Wildwood Flower.”

While people were buying lots of Carter records all across America, the Carters seldom ventured far from their southwest Virginia home. A.P. and Sara divorced, but they wisely kept their professional relationship intact to their mutual benefit. Sara’s lover, Cousin Coy, moved west to help ensure peace in Poor Valley.

A Jackson County native was the next big influence on the Carters. “Doctor” John Romulus Brinkley Jr., was born in Beta and raised along the Tuckasegee River at East LaPorte. He was a quack and hustler who became wealthy until the American Medical Association and the IRS caught up with him. Brinkley promoted his “medical” practice on his outlaw radio station in Mexico, just across the border from Del Rio, Texas. The 250,000-watt signal blanketed the United States. A Brinkley agent made the Carters an offer they couldn’t turn down in 1938. The money was too good even though they didn’t want to leave home. For six months in each of the next three years, they lived in Texas and made music twice daily on Doc’s radio station between pitches for his “medical” practice.

The quack from Jackson County indirectly played Cupid. Mail poured in from all 48 states. Sara wondered if Coy might be among their millions of listeners. One night, she dedicated a song to the man she hadn’t seen in six years. Coy Bays was listening in California to the woman who had lost track of where he was and who, he was sure, had rejected him. He hastened to Texas to marry her.

It’s too bad we can’t recognize historical significance when we are young. In the late ‘50s, Maybelle Carter spent a winter in Johnson City, Tenn., at the home of Bonnie Lou and Buster Moore who were popular local entertainers with a weekly TV show. I attended many of their shows and saw Maybelle quite often. A quiet, softspoken woman who was about 50, she was just an “old” woman who happened to play guitar to this kid in his early 20s. We’d just say howdy when I’d visit with the Moores after a show. If I understood then what I understand now about the importance of the Carter Family’s music, I’d have had a lot of things to talk with Maybelle about.

(Steinbicker is a retired CPA who lives in Asheville.)