Search - The Carter Family :: Country Folk

Great compilation though missing some classics

Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 03/29/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Carter family as featured in this compilation comprised A P Carter, his wife Sara and Sara's cousin Maybelle, the wife of A P's brother Ezra, himself not a member of the group. The trio were (and remain) a major influence in both country and folk music. Their own delightfully simple music could be classed as either country or folk, but country music wasn't considered a separate style when they started their recording career.



This compilation contains 103 of their songs recorded between 1927 and 1941. They include My Dixie darling (later revived brilliantly by Carlene Carter, granddaughter of Maybelle), Keep on the sunny side, Wildwood flower, Wabash cannonball (covered by Roy Acuff who made the song his own), Lonesome valley, Bury me under the weeping willow, Little darling pal of mine, Worried man blues (later covered by Woody Guthrie, the Kingston trio and Lonnie Donegan among others), Jimmy Brown the newsboy (later revived by a number of bluegrass and country singers), Hello stranger and My home's across the blue ridge mountains. Nevertheless, other classics such as Can the circle be unbroken? (now better known as Will the circle be unbroken?), You are my flower, I'm thinking tonight of my blue eyes and Foggy mountain top are missing. Still, these tracks are easily found elsewhere if you haven't got them already.



Long before Colonel Parker insisted that Elvis Presley only recorded songs that gave him a share of the royalties, A P Carter pulled an even more audacious trick. He wrote some songs but he found others in the public domain, all of which he claimed the song writing copyright for. It is therefore not always possible to be sure which songs he actually wrote (though the booklet notes point out some that he didn't write, including Keep on the sunny side, while confirming some that he did), but the Carter family, by recording these traditional songs, ensured that they were preserved for posterity. Talking of Elvis, this box includes a cover of Are you lonesome tonight?, first recorded in 1927 by Vaughn DeLeath, one of the most popular female singers of the twenties, who had an American top five hit with it. Comparatively few covers of this excellent song were recorded prior to 1961. The credits in the track listing of this compilation list A P as the songwriter, but he definitely didn't write this one. The booklet notes acknowledge Lou Hardman and Roy Turk as the writers and these are names you'll find elsewhere.



There is, of much more to the Carter family's music than the famous songs and there are plenty of other songs to keep listeners interested. For example, there's a great story song, John Hardy was a desperate little man, about a man hanged for alleged murder provoked by a gambling debt of just 25 cents. It's the kind of song that Maybelle's son-in-law Johnny Cash might have recorded but I don't think he did.



Unless you have a comprehensive collection of their music, such as the Bear Family boxed set or the two out of print JSP boxes, this will entertain you, whether as a first compilation or as an addition to what you already have."