The Carter Family: 1927-1934

I have just listened to every CD on this set one by one. Even though I have been playing this kind of music since the 1960s, even though I have had this or that single disc Carter Collection, even though I am judged as some kind of expert on old time music by some, I was shocked at how many tunes that I know as old time music tunes or bluegrass tunes identified with other artists were Carter Family versions of those tunes.

The Carters performed an immense service for the history and preservation of traditional American music, black and white.They were not allowed to record already copywritten and published songs since Ralph Peer who recorded them for Victor Bluebird only got paid for publishing rights and could take only tunes he could claim publishing rights to. At the beginning the Carters were not such great song writers, although in the later 1930s when they began living in Del Rio Texas and broadcasting over Mexican border radio, they did write a number of great songs.

AP Carter traveled up and down the hills and hollers, mountains and valleys of Southern Virginia, Tennesee, North Carolina, and Kentucky asking Black and white working people, farmers, musicianers of all kinds, if they had songs for them to record. During the times late in the years covered by this set, when AP moved to Detroit to get cash paying work, and when his brother Eck and his wife Maybelle moved to DC where Eck got railroad work, they asked Southern people in those towns for songs.

During much of this time AP travelled with Leslie Riddle a black blues guitarist so that they were able to find songs African Americans as well as whites had in their hearts and minds. The Carters accepted Leslie as an equal. He lived in their home like a family member defying the Jim Crow Ettitique of the times. The Carters were all solid anti-confederate Lincoln Republicans. AP's dying words were "Don't vote Democrat" which in 1960 in Virginia meant don't vote Dixiecrat.

Old AP used to delight in the relatively small royalty checks all these songs brought him in the 1950s which he dutifully divided with Sara and Maybelle, even though all the songs were in his name. It is too bad he died in 1960 just before the folk revival brought all these songs back onto hundreds of records by folk singers, then by bluegrassers, then by country Western artists. Those checks would have gotten a lot bigger. People brought these songs to the Carters, mostly to AP and Leslie Riddle, singing them on their porches, or in juke joints, or often when AP would stop after hearing a rumor that used saw mill parts could be obtained at a good price, something he was obessed with. Some folks did bring them the songs in yellowed old sheet music with crackled paper from the 19th Century, or as pages cut out of poetry books published deep in the past. Some of them would go back stage at the little school house and church shows the Carters did in the mountain towns during the depression and gave an old ballad not sung since their grandparents time. Some of them would request a song that the Carters didn't know, and AP might ask them to sing the tune right then and there.

On top of this, of course, AP Carter had been known since he was a boy for singing songs, teaching singing schools, being willing to walk all day up and down the Southside Virginia mountains to find a good singer or good music. This is how he found Sara Addington, his wife who was a hell of a singer. Then when AP's brother married Maybelle Addington who was known as the best guitar and banjo picker in the valleys around there (and no slouch on the fiddle and mandolin too)since she was a teenager (and she was only 18 when the Carters began recording) they were set. This may have been a plot, because a lot of the time AP would go up and over the mountains up and down walking all day to court a reluctant Sara, she would be sitting in the parlor singing or playing the autoharp, or learning guitar chords, along with her cousin Maybelle's guitar, banjo, or fiddle.

AP Carter was the real song catcher. These were a few of the hundreds of songs he caught, a few that were written by himself, Sara, and Maybelle.

So this is, in fact, an encyclopedia of the songs that were sung by Black and white working folks, farmers, musicians, rounders, up and down the mountains of Viriginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentcuky and the songs migrants took with them to Washington and Detroit. This is a treasure trove for anyone wnating to return to the lost world of those people, or to find songs from those years that speak to our lives and problems. Besides they are pretty good to listen to!

One good thing about this collection is that you hear a lot of the tunes they did in finger picking and slide guitar styles that Maybelle learned from Leslie Riddle. A lot of modern performers do them just flat picking, or the thumb and strum style Maybelle is best known for.

At this price, everyone with ears needs this.

This set is 100% recommended.

If you want to listen to the roots of our musical heritage, listen to the Carter family!

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