The Carter Family

Carter Family are fantastic, I have a bunch of the Rounder collections and they are all great.

― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (11 years ago) Permalink

― Tracer hand, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (11 years ago) Permalink

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (11 years ago) Permalink

― o. nate, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (11 years ago) Permalink

― hector (hector), Saturday, 1 May 2004 02:48 (9 years ago) Permalink

― A Nairn (moretap), Saturday, 1 May 2004 04:33 (9 years ago) Permalink

― Aaron A., Saturday, 1 May 2004 04:57 (9 years ago) Permalink

― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Saturday, 1 May 2004 05:37 (9 years ago) Permalink

― Super-Kate (kate), Saturday, 1 May 2004 06:27 (9 years ago) Permalink

"I wandered again, to my home in the mountains, Where in youth's early dawn, I was happy and free.
I looked for my friends, but I never could find them, I found they were all, rank strangers to me.

Chorus: Everybody I met, seemed to be a rank stranger, No mother or dad, Not a friend could I see,
They knew not my name, and knew not their faces, I found they were all, rank strangers to me.

They've all moved away, said the voice of a stranger, To a beautiful home, across the dark sea.
Some beautiful day, I'll meet them in heaven, Where no one will be, a stranger to me. "

― thomas de'aguirre (biteylove), Saturday, 1 May 2004 11:51 (9 years ago) Permalink

― spittle (spittle), Sunday, 2 May 2004 03:22 (9 years ago) Permalink

― spittle (spittle), Sunday, 2 May 2004 03:22 (9 years ago) Permalink

― jack cole (jackcole), Sunday, 2 May 2004 08:53 (9 years ago) Permalink

― OCP (OCP), Sunday, 2 May 2004 14:05 (9 years ago) Permalink

i wouldn't have a lawyer
i'll tell you the reason why
every time he opens his mouth
he tells a great big lie

chawin' chewin' gum
chewin' chawin' gum
chawin' chewin' gum
chewin' chawin' gum

i wouldn't have a doctor
i'll tell you the reason why
he rides all over the country
makes the people die

chawin' chewin' gum?

i wouldn't have a farmer
i'll tell you the reason why
because he has so plenty to eat
'specially pumpkin pie

chawin' chewin' gum?

i took my girl to church last night
how do you reckon she done
she walked right up to the preacher's face
and chewed her chewing gum

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Sunday, 2 May 2004 17:04 (9 years ago) Permalink

True. But the Stanleys made it a standard.

But as for the Carters, they're a pretty fascinating case. I can't think of another family with as much and as long-lasting influence on American music (that's counting Johnny Cash as part of the extended family, of course). A.P. was apparently a real weirdo, too. After Sara split, I think he kinda spent the rest of his life working that little general store (now the family museum at the Carter Fold), and mumbling to himself.

― spittle (spittle), Sunday, 2 May 2004 17:09 (9 years ago) Permalink

So I'm not the only one who thinks "Chewing Gum" is a punk song.

"There's No Hiding Place Down Here" is fucking terrifying, yes?

― clotpoll, Thursday, 13 March 2008 06:38 (5 years ago) Permalink

best recording artists of the first half of the 20th century

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 5 July 2012 16:21 (10 months ago) Permalink

top five carters tracks as of this very moment this morning in no particular order

hello stranger
jealous hearted me
when the world's on fire (woody guthrie took the melody of this for 'this land is your land')
lulu wall
will you miss me when i'm gone

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 5 July 2012 16:23 (10 months ago) Permalink

carters used to kinda bore me (they seemed too upright/episcopalian compared to other music of the time). but i've come to my senses. they rock! i mean, i'd put duke ellington ahead of them in terms of the first half of the 20th century, but the carters are probably top 5 anyway.

― tylerw, Thursday, 5 July 2012 16:28 (10 months ago) Permalink

Anyone know of a good comp/best of on Spotify so I can dive in?

― global tetrahedron, Thursday, 5 July 2012 17:13 (10 months ago) Permalink

these are the ones i have, kind of a lot to wade through, i suppose. but great!

― tylerw, Thursday, 5 July 2012 17:21 (10 months ago) Permalink

Any of the Rounder comps of the Complete Victor recordings are amazing. I think When the Roses Bloom in Dixieland is my favorite, but they're all great.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Thursday, 5 July 2012 17:23 (10 months ago) Permalink

"There's No Hiding Place Down Here" is fucking terrifying, yes?

Yes, yes.

― clemenza, Thursday, 5 July 2012 18:52 (10 months ago) Permalink

Single Girl, Married Girl was one of my first favorite Carter family songs.

Lulu Wall also an early favorite. Excellent road trip music!!

― nicest bitch of poster (La Lechera), Thursday, 5 July 2012 18:58 (10 months ago) Permalink

Two great and contrasting lines about loves:

You're just the girl of my dreams, though it seems that my dreams never come true

and

You are my flower that's blooming in the mountains for me, you are my flower that's blooming there for me

― click here if you want to load them all (Hurting 2), Thursday, 5 July 2012 19:05 (10 months ago) Permalink

Trad. - Wagoner's Lad

― am0n, Thursday, 5 July 2012 19:05 (10 months ago) Permalink

LL you heard the @dvance b@se cover of single girl married girl that jody sang right?

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, 5 July 2012 19:29 (10 months ago) Permalink

I think so? I know her voice would def be suited for singing that song!

― nicest bitch of poster (La Lechera), Thursday, 5 July 2012 19:31 (10 months ago) Permalink

well here it is for everyone, the band i'm currently playing in covers single girl married girl with me rocking the two-chord autoharp part

http://soundcloud.com/advance-base/single-girl-married-girl

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, 5 July 2012 19:33 (10 months ago) Permalink

Recorded this day in 1927 at their very first session in Bristol, TN.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Wednesday, 1 August 2012 16:18 (9 months ago) Permalink

when the world's on fire (woody guthrie took the melody of this for 'this land is your land')

well they were all basically traditional folk songs, weren't they? and a lot of those melodies were used over and over again.

― fact checking cuz, Wednesday, 1 August 2012 21:20 (9 months ago) Permalink

and it continues to this day thanks to a famous plagiarist -- dylan's new album draws on this one

The title track is a nearly 14-minute depiction of the Titanic disaster. Numerous folk and gospel songs gave accounts of the event, including the Carter Family's "The Titanic," which Dylan drew from. "I was just fooling with that one night," he says. "I liked that melody – I liked it a lot. 'Maybe I'm gonna appropriate this melody.' But where would I go with it?"

― tylerw, Wednesday, 1 August 2012 21:26 (9 months ago) Permalink

fav bit from No Direction Home:

Interview: "So Bob, are these original songs? Are you writing your own songs?"

Bob: "Well....they're all mine now"

― Elrond Hubbard (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 1 August 2012 21:34 (9 months ago) Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxo-zayI6tE

idk, you tell me if that's plagiarism or not. the idea that all of the songs the carters recorded were folk songs is off base--a lot of them had folk roots but quite a number were composed by A.P. Carter.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 2 August 2012 00:09 (9 months ago) Permalink

his wiki is kinda sad, esp the part about how he left the music business to run a general store
but i will add that his picture is rather fetching

i'm kind of confused about the origin of the songs myself; i'm starting to wonder if maybe there's not a company line and another story entirely.

Some of the songs became so closely identified with A. P. Carter that he has been popularly, but mistakenly, credited with writing them. For example, "Keep on the Sunny Side of Life" was published in 1901 with the words being credited to Ada Blenkhorn and the music credited to Howard Entwisle,[2] and "The Meeting in the Air" has been published giving credit for music and words to I. G. Martin.[3]

i'm not saying anyone here is right or wrong, just that maybe we don't really know 100% of what really happened with the authorship of songs. you know, folklore is folklore?

― nicest bitch of poster (La Lechera), Thursday, 2 August 2012 04:05 (9 months ago) Permalink

you tell me if that's plagiarism or not.

well, yeah, they're close. of course. one is clearly derived from the other, but they aren't exact copies. actionable in a copyright court? probably. any different from how thousands of other folk songs have been borrowed, slightly altered and recontextualized through the years? no. and i'll side with folk tradition over copyright lawyers.

most of what i know of a.p. carter's methods i got from reading the liner notes of those great carter family cd's on rounder. it's been a while since i read them, and they and i are currently on different coasts, but my memory is that they made it pretty clear that a.p. was much more of a song collector than a songwriter. his songwriting credits, if i recall correctly, had a lot more to to with publishing and ownership than with lyrics and melodies. then again, there's no doubt he and the carters did their own altering and recontextualizing, and the results were consistently fantastic. i love love love them. and i love that dylan quote from no direction home. that's perfect.

― fact checking cuz, Thursday, 2 August 2012 07:47 (9 months ago) Permalink

still recommend the carter family fold, bigtime

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 2 August 2012 10:18 (9 months ago) Permalink

On the plagarism issue, Mark Zwonitzer’s heartbreaking “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?” details how A.P. would go off and travel through the mountains, looking for songs that the Carters “appropriated” as their own. That’s just the way it’s done in the folk tradition. Pretty hard to pinpoint the origins of many of those songs.

― Jazzbo, Thursday, 2 August 2012 12:43 (9 months ago) Permalink

i'm not saying, like, it's BAD that woody copied that melody, or that it's an unacceptable practice, but as far as the folk tradition goes, that is literally the only other time i've heard that melody, and i listen to a lot of 20s/30s country music. it seems to be a pretty direct source for 'this land..'

yer right that the "a.p. carter" composer credit on their records has more to do with business than actual ownership, but I wouldn't mistake the carter family for anything other than a commercial country music proposition. they made records to be sold-- for the same reason anyone else made records--for money. a.p.'s interests in folk music and song collecting may have influenced their repetoire, but the motivation for making records was not to disseminate folklore, it was to sell records.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 2 August 2012 14:36 (9 months ago) Permalink

i'm not trying to denigrate anyone here btw, like i've said i think the carters produced some of the best music of that era, or any era.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 2 August 2012 14:43 (9 months ago) Permalink

just one of my pet peeves is the idea that these early commercial country music recordings were done out of some sort of altruistic desire to preserve--it's just not true, at least until you get to the lomaxes and the other field-recordists.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 2 August 2012 14:43 (9 months ago) Permalink

Think it's a mistake to get too strict about a clear distinction between "folk tradition" and "made to be sold" - lots of "folk" over the centuries has been played for commercial gain, right? The distinction only really begins to bite later in history with the preservers and the folklorists, right?

― Tim, Thursday, 2 August 2012 14:55 (9 months ago) Permalink

Ian otm! That was popular music too.

― nicest bitch of poster (La Lechera), Thursday, 2 August 2012 14:56 (9 months ago) Permalink

(By which I mean: the eliding of "folk tradition" with "altruistic desire to preserve" happens only once you get preservers and folklorists off making records in the fields, right?)

― Tim, Thursday, 2 August 2012 14:57 (9 months ago) Permalink

see, tim, this is where i think my definition of "folk" becomes a lot more strict than most people. i don't consider, say, bob dylan to be a folk artist.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 2 August 2012 15:01 (9 months ago) Permalink

i think i would need pages to properly articulate (to myself even) where that line lies, between commercial and folk music and where the crossover lies. i'm inclined to say that the same piece of music can be both folk and pop, the difference being in its performance--square dance tune played at a fair for dancing: folk. same tune recorded and put onto a record: pop. but that's a very big generalization and even as i'm writing this i can think of other examples that confuse the situation.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 2 August 2012 15:04 (9 months ago) Permalink

a large chunk of early country music was itself re-worked tin pan alley pop tunes, minstrel shows, or 19th century sentimental songs.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 2 August 2012 15:05 (9 months ago) Permalink

xpost I don't disagree with you, and I certainly would like to read those pages!

I think I'm just saying that, from the point of view of those early musicians / recorders, a distinction which said country music = commercial and folk = not-for-profit do-gooders wouldn't have rung true or made any sense.

PLUS as I think about it, probably the most important source of the confusion between early commerical country and "proper" folk music was the nascent country music industry itself, which routinely marketed its styles - often new styles developed around what sounded good recorded and played back - as "old-time" and "hillbilly" and whatnot. So if it bugs you, blame AP Carter.

And Harry Smith of course, who never should have used the word "folk" on those records, the silly sausage.

― Tim, Thursday, 2 August 2012 15:08 (9 months ago) Permalink

a common distinction people use when talking about this era of music is whether the musicians were professionals or amateurs. most of the big names in the field -- carters, skillet lickers, john carson, charlie poole, carolina tar heels etc -- were all professional musicians. xposts

i do understand that to the audience of the time, the distinction would not have made sense -- folk music in that sense is a recent invention is it not? this is why i need to read that alan lomax book my roommate lent me, and as many other books as i can on the subject.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 2 August 2012 15:11 (9 months ago) Permalink

for years i kind of listened to this stuff in a vacuum without thinking too hard about its cultural implications beyond the very surface level -- and the more i discover and read and listen now, i find those earlier assumptions to be more and more off-base.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 2 August 2012 15:15 (9 months ago) Permalink

xpost Right, and that's why it *does* make sense to say of AP Carter "that's the way the folk tradition works" - although he stands at the threshold of a massive change in the way music was made and sold and with the long view he was pop, not folk, he was very likely just going about his business in the way he knew how, picking up tunes and playing them, selling that however he could.

I read an interesting book in this broad area some years ago called "Creating Country Music - Fabricating Authenticity".

― Tim, Thursday, 2 August 2012 15:16 (9 months ago) Permalink

i would read that book.

i recall from reading the carters bio that A.P's song collecting was inspired by his discovery that copywriting songs could make him money, but maybe that was a misreading of a more subtle point the author was trying to make. it's been a few years. great book though -- http://www.amazon.com/Carter-Family-Their-Legacy-American/dp/074324382X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343920729&sr=8-1&keywords=carter+family+miss+me

anyway.. the oral transmission of tunes to a.p. is the sticking point i think. by some definitions, that is what folk music IS, more than anything else. but when the method of reproduction and the time/place of performance shifts, i'm not sure it's folk music anymore.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, 2 August 2012 15:20 (9 months ago) Permalink

Oooh I'd like to read that book. Maybe it's the excuse I need to buy like 10 Carter family CDs for tuppence ha'penny as I've been thinking about doing forever.

I think we broadly agree, except I'ma bit too wearly to worry about the distinction too much! It makes me crazed that any old beardo singer-songwriter with an acoustic gets called folk these days. "These days" being since before you and I were born, obv.!

― Tim, Thursday, 2 August 2012 15:28 (9 months ago) Permalink

*weary* not wearly

― Tim, Thursday, 2 August 2012 15:29 (9 months ago) Permalink

Seems like Don't Forget This Song, the finally-on-the-verge-of-coming-out Carter Family graphic novel biography by David Lasky and Frank Young, has not been mentioned itt. Dudes have been working on this book for the better part of a decade now. What I have seen looks amazing. Lawyer for the Carter family publishing rights has apparently been a total fuckhole to these guys in every way but they got it done. It's from Abrams.

http://carterfamilycomix.blogspot.com/

― Lewis Apparition (Jon Lewis), Thursday, 2 August 2012 16:21 (9 months ago) Permalink

wow, that looks neat! seems so weird that they'd have issues w/ publishing rights, but that's america for you. i am an idiot when it comes to a lot of this kinda thing, but wouldn't a lot of it be public domain by now?

― tylerw, Thursday, 2 August 2012 16:27 (9 months ago) Permalink

People who get all het up about Bob Dylan "stealing" music are disgusting savages imo. He borrowed from people who borrowed from people who borrowed. I respect the need for credit and compensation but I also think rigid ideas about ownership do a disservice to music.

― Will Chave (Hurting 2), Thursday, 2 August 2012 16:40 (9 months ago) Permalink

xpost at one point they were forbidden to quote any lyrics whatsoever. I think some of this may have been smoothed over once Abrams took the project though.

― Lewis Apparition (Jon Lewis), Thursday, 2 August 2012 16:50 (9 months ago) Permalink