Carter Family

Carter Family, family of American country music singers, songwriters, and instrumentalists, also known as The Original Carter Family. Members of the group included A. P. Carter (1891-1960); his wife, Sara Dougherty Carter (1898-1979); and A. P.’s sister-in-law, Maybelle Addington Carter (1909-1978). The Carter family made the first recordings featuring a rural sound to gain nationwide popularity. Their music set a precedent by emphasizing simple three-part vocal harmonies over instrumentation. Maybelle’s three-fingered so-called Carter Lick, a guitar technique in which she picked out a song’s melody on the bass strings with her thumb while strumming the treble strings with her fingers, transformed the guitar into a lead instrument in country music. “Wabash Cannonball” (1929), “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” (1935), “Wildwood Flower” (1928), and “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes (1929) are some of the many songs popularized and preserved by the Carters. Many of A. P.’s original melodies can be heard in songs to which other artists wrote lyrics, including “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” (1952) by Kitty Wells and “This Land Is Your Land” (1944) by Woody Guthrie.

The Carters made their first recordings for the RCA Victor record label in 1927 in Bristol, Tennessee. They had instant success and recorded more than 20 singles over the next two years. As their fame spread during the 1930s the Carters began touring nationally. In 1938 the trio moved to Del Rio, Texas, to broadcast a daily radio show on XERA radio. Three years later they relocated in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they broadcast a new program on station WBT. A. P. and Sara divorced in 1939, but the group continued to record together until 1943.

The Carter Family legacy continued when Maybelle formed a new act with her three daughters, Helen, Anita, and June. Also known as The Carter Family, or Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, the group performed from 1943 to 1948 on WRVA, a country music station in Richmond, Virginia. In 1950 they joined the Grand Ole Opry, a stage and radio show broadcast from Nashville, Tennessee.

The Carter sisters split up in the mid-1950s, but all four women continued with solo careers. June Carter married country singer Johnny Cash in 1968, and members of The Carter Family often appeared on his stage and road showsduring the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1970 The Original Carter Family became the first group to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 1993 the United States Postal Service honored The Carter Family with a commemorative postage stamp.