This is bloody fabulous... The Carter Family, singing their signature song, Wildwood Flower, on some unspecified US television show - possibly the Opry - in the 1960s. Unfortunately, original members Sara Carter, and her husband AP (Alvin Pleasant), are absent. AP died in 1960. But we do have Mother Maybelle Carter, one of the original trio, here on the guitar and lead vocal, with her daughters June, Helen (second guitar) and Anita. June, playing the autoharp on this, was, of course, married to Johnny Cash. I love the customary dour delivery of Mother Maybelle. There was always something bleak and pleasingly cheerless about the Carter Family recordings - especially effective on their ostensibly happier songs, such as Keep On The Sunny Side - an almost 19th century Appalachian settler gloom and severity. This clip also reminds me what a really outstanding, although almost unrecognised, guitarist Mother Maybelle was. Just watch her technique on this. Brilliant. The Carter Family were the first country musicians to be commercially recorded, along with Jimmie Rodgers, by the Victor labels Ralph Peer, in Bristol, Virginia, in 1927. Mother Maybelle died in 1978. Wildwood Flower probably had its origins in an old English folk song. https://youtube/watch?v=ewnfWoSQz3o
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 15:21:02 +0000
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