Carter Family

And so you're phrasing, you're just kind of like, I don't know what to do here.

If you ask me to play The Carter Family in C, like, okay.

Right, exactly.

But not St. Thomas, yeah.

Yes, the Everly Brothers.

Carter Family.

The Secret Sisters.

First Aid Kit.

Yeah, I think we'll leave it with that.

Yeah.

The Carter Family is nice.

We know that those are good ones.

Let's play a bit of old time music.

Here's the Carter family doing a song that I've heard done several different versions in later years.

But it's such a neat song.

I first heard it from Mike Seeger.

And he did a lovely job, I think, with the auto harp he used.

And here's the Carter family as they recorded it.

Hello, stranger Put your loving hand in mine Hello, stranger Put your loving hand in mine You are a stranger And you're a pal of mine Get up, rounder Let a working man lay down.

Get up rounder.

The group brought punk energy and contemporary concerns to an older country song, helping establish the sound and identity of what was to become Americana.

And we also heard the Carter family's No Depression in Heaven recorded during the Great Depression.

Its promise of a better world beyond earthly hardship reflected both the religious convictions and economic anxieties of the period.

And we heard a little bit of George Thorogood, and he kicked out the jams in that set with his cover of Hank Williams' Move It On Over.

and a hope of reunion in heaven.

In 1935, the Carter family recorded A.P. Carter's adaptation, Can the Circle Be Unbroken? Same music, almost entirely new words, and it was a very different song.

It was about a mother's funeral, the hearse pulling away, and the grief of the people left behind.

Then, in 1972, a young California band called the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band did something nobody expected.

On my last episode, I did a deep dive into the true story between Johnny Cash and June Carter.

In that episode, I talked about the history of the Carter family, and on that video was a comment from one of our Roots Music History family members.

She had commented that hearing the story of Johnny and June and the history of the Carter family really reminded her of a man named Ralph Peer.

Mr. Ralph Peer.

I have never done an episode on Ralph Peer.

their arrival.

All in all, I believe Ralph Peer recorded about 76 songs total in Bristol from July 25th to August 5th, 1927.

Of course, Ernest, who his stage name was Ernest Pop Stoneman, Jimmy Rogers, and the Carter family are among the most notable acts to have been part of this week-long, days-long recording session in Bristol.

Like, I was like, I wanted that, that, that's, like, that's what, uh, g- got me excited and that's what I was trying to recreate, like, um, at our shows as well, you know?

And between Johnny and June, and of course, you know, you, you think of, uh, the, you know, it's not just Johnny Cash's music, June Carter's music, it's the Carter family as well.

Yeah.

You've a huge back catalog to dip into.

That's on the...

Yeah, because we have to kind of keep it interesting for ourselves, but if somebody's come and seen us five, six times, what we try to do is, like, we try to do wee things.

But as you said there before, the, because June C- the Carter family was there before Johnny Cash, so we dip on the, some of their stuff that they have done.

So, k- uh, Karen and the, the girls would maybe do a, a medley of their stuff sometimes, or they have something like, unfortunately Dolly Parton passed there, like they would do maybe a Dolly Parton song.

... 2018 with Alison Krauss and Suzanne Cox.

We did sort of a Carter Family tribute, and I got to play the part of Maybelle Carter-

Wow

... who I love.

And, uh, I always think, I think it's great.

You know, you see, you talk about musical families, you think about the Wainwrights or, you know, uh, the Roaches or any of the, you know, the Carter family who we could go for days and days talking about this, but there is something always so cool about hearing blood harmony.

You know what I mean? Like,

Yeah, I mean, family harmonies are often just the best, you know.