The Carter Family

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.

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.

Pretty hard to pinpoint the origins of many of those songs.

"if anyone asks you who composed this song
if anyone asks you who composed this song
tell him it was i and i sing it all day long"
--the carter family (and 10 million others), "worried man blues"

Don't Forget This Song

such a fantastic book.

I saw The Winding Stream today--can't tell if it's two years old (IMDB lists it as 2014), one year old (they've got the actual release date as 2015), or brand new (no mention of it on this thread, for instance). Some amazing footage, as you might expect. There's also about five minutes' worth of a one-on-one interview with Johnny Cash that is very moving--and, in the context of the film, looks like it was shot yesterday. They get a little overly cute towards the beginning of the film in recreating the original recording sessions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-bF8lOoNjM

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".

I haven't read that but I think I remember reading a good version of virtually the same argument in Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music by Benjamin Filene.

As I remember it, the concept was that while today, through the graininess of their records, we perceive the Carter Family as some kind of original, authentic family group from a "tradition," they were actually already nostalgic music aimed at people who had already left their "traditional" homes for urban areas, moving from agricultural to industrial life. And mirroring this, the music was produced and distributed in an industrial and non-local way.

Franklin Bruno has written some long piece on this phenomenon as well (not the carters specifically tbf)

One thing I wish they'd included in the documentary--there was a fair bit on June getting together with Johnny Cash--was a "Jackson" clip. Such an amazing song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3NJC18Oi04&nohtml5=False

Doesn't Jerry Leiber have a writing credit on it?

Interesting recording history too.

You're right--never knew that.

Writer(s): Billy Edd Wheeler and Jerry Leiber (as Gaby Rodgers)

Did you know about his Stealer's Wheel production credit?

Billy Edd Stealer's Wheeler? Didn't know that either.

No, silly, Jerry Leiber.

Sorry, no apostrophe, just Stealers Wheel.

idly turned on this "The Winding Stream" documentary - which was fine up until the point that they started animating photos to make them look like paper cutout puppets of AP, Maybelle and Sara were singing and then I just got creeped out and turned it off. Lots of good ppl involved/interviewed though.

Just finished watching the doc. Agree that the production values aren't to my taste, but I can scarcely think of a music doc I've seen more jam-packed with information than this one.

As someone said way upthread, "ive got a crush on maybelle."

I do too now.

my Nashville Scene ballot comments on the soundtrack:
The Winding Stream: The Carters, Cashes and the Course of Country Music
I'd say John Prine phones it in, but that would imply more energy than is evident. Most of the rest of this is pretty darn good (even Kristofferson, although he hands off lines to others). These Original Carter Family selections don't reach me like other configurations of Carters, but then again there are lots more of the latter (apparently the doc, which I haven’t seen, is *mainly* about the OCF’s music as Legacy-catalyst, and how it moves on through more toe-tapping eras). Fave so far is the title song, "Do not disturb this daydream," in which "the sparkling trout" is eyed by the kingfisher, and "Someone with golden hair/Looks a lot like you."

and from 2014 ballot comments, re Carlene's album, since she doesn't get that much attention, seems like:

That there Carlene album, Carter Girl, is something I'm not totally into yet. but it certainly is better than I feared, when I heard she was going to salute the roots, with Carter Family chestnuts. I mostly know her from my ancient, scruffy-sounding twofer, Musical Shapes & Blue Nun, where she and Nick Lowe tried for Bakersfield/Beatles (and I guess Rockpile)appeal: rocking country, rather than country-rock, Also, she had a rave-up with NRBQ-to-Nashville guitarist-songwriter Al Anderson on Austin City Limits. This album, produced by Don Was, mixes old and new songs and beats in an overcast atmosphere, never anachronistic nor murky. The rhythm can be a guide, though not a cheerleader, in "Lonesome Valley 2003," where she goes to and from several funerals, and it (mainly bass) even slaps butts on "Me and the Wildwood Rose," a road song about childhood rolling with Carter ladies and little sister Rosey, later a true desperado (track record not mentioned, but the song visits her funeral). Carlene and Elizabeth Cook leave a life of crime to settle down, attended by angels and what sounds like a tumbleweed full of mechanical bulls. Elsewhere, she may lope or trot or (once) waltz through variously challenging situations, incl. those associated with outlaws, but she's always adapting, with no self-congratulation.
Hey:just give her those flowers right now, even if you think, with her own track record, you might not have long to wait for yet another send-off; and furthermore, "Kind words are no good/In a bed too narrow." Lots of family, incl. Johnny and June, sing along on the finale, "I Ain't Gonna Work Tomorrow," where she's ditched again, but on the other hand, see title; and also, "Pretty girls are dancin' on the cold, cold ground," so that helps too (far as I'm concerned).

Speaking of descendants, I also liked Carter's Chord, who had the seeming misfortune of being on the mostly self-absorbed Toby Keith's Show Dog label, with Trailer Choir and a few others.

The thing that struck me most in the doc was detailing the manner in which AP and Lesley Riddle would cris-cross Appalachia for songs to use (which he was, in turned, paid for). On the surface, that seems like a pretty low thing to do, but as Rosanne pointed out, nearly all of those songs would be lost to history now if The Carters and Victor didn't preserve them.

True, but think it was AP, or some family spokesperson, who claimed Woody Guthrie lifted tunes from them, when (at least in some cases) those tunes went way back before any of the 20th Century-performing Carters or Guthrie were born, as pointed out by Bill C. Malone and others.

Carlene Carter's Musical Shapes is the new wave/country hybrid I didn't know I'd been looking for, w o w