Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow
2. Little Log Cabin by the Sea
3. Poor Orphan Child
4. Storms Are on the Ocean
5. Single Girl, Married Girl
6. Wandering Boy
7. Meet Me by the Moonlight Alone
8. Little Darlin' Pal of Mine
9. Keep on the Sunny Side
10. Anchored in Love
11. John Hardy Was a Desperate Little Man
12. I Ain't Goin' to Work Tomorrow
13. Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?
14. River of Jordan
15. Chewing Gum
16. Wildwood Flower
17. I Have No One to Love Me (But the Sailor on the Deep Blue Sea)
18. Forsaken Love
19. Sweet Fern
20. My Clinch Mountain Home
21. God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign
22. I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes
23. Little Moses
24. Lulu Walls
25. Grave on the Green Hillside

Disc 2:

1. Don't Forget This Song
2. Foggy Mountain Top
3. Bring Back My Blue Eyed Boy
4. Diamonds in the Rough
5. Engine 143
6. Homestead on the Farm
7. Cyclone of Rye Cove
8. Motherless Children
9. When the Roses Bloom in Dixieland
10. No Telephone in Heaven
11. Western Hobo
12. Carter's Blues
13. Wabash Cannonball
14. Distant Land to Roam
15. Jimmie Brown the Newsboy
16. Kitty Waltz
17. Fond Affection
18. Cannonball
19. Lover's Farewell
20. There's Someone Awaiting for Me
21. Little Log Hut in the Lane
22. When the Springtime Comes Again
23. When the World's on Fire
24. I Have an Aged Mother
25. Dying Soldier
26. Worried Man Blues

Disc 3:

1. Lonesome Valley
2. On the Rock Where Moses Stood
3. Room in Heaven for Me
4. Lonesome Pine Special
5. No More the Moon Shines on Lorena
6. On My Way to Canaan's Land
7. Where Shall I Be?
8. Sow 'Em on the Mountain
9. Darling Nellie Across the Sea
10. Birds Were Singing of You
11. Weary Prodigal Son
12. My Old Cottage Home
13. When I'm Gone
14. Sunshine in the Mountain
15. Let the Church Roll On
16. Lonesome for You
17. Can't Feel at Home
18. Why There's a Tear in My Eye
19. Wonderful City
20. Jimmie Rodgers Visits the Carter Family
21. Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers in Texas
22. 'Mid the Green Fields of Virginia
23. Happiest Days of All
24. Picture on the Wall
25. Amber Tresses

Disc 4:

1. I Never Loved but One
2. Tell Me That You Love Me
3. Where We'll Never Grow Old
4. We Will March Through the Streets of the City
5. Sweet as the Flowers in May Time
6. Will the Roses Bloom in Heaven/On a Hill Lone and Gray
7. My Little Home in Tennessee
8. Sun of the Soul
9. If One Won't Another One Will
10. Broken Hearted Love
11. Two Sweethearts
12. Winding Stream
13. I Wouldn't Mind Dying
14. Spirit of Love Watches Over Me
15. Church in the Wildwood
16. Give Me Roses While I Live
17. I Never Will Marry
18. On the Sea of Galilee
19. Home by the Sea
20. I Loved You Better Than You Knew
21. This Is Like Heaven to Me
22. See That My Grave Is Kept Green
23. Over the Garden Wall
24. Gold Watch and Chain
25. Will My Mother Know Me There?

Disc 5:

1. On a Hill Lone and Gray
2. Cowboy Jack
3. I'll Be All Smiles Tonight
4. Away Out on Saint Sabbath
5. Happy or Lonesome
6. One Little Word
7. Darling Daisies
8. East Virginia Blues
9. Lovers Return
10. It'll Aggravate Your Soul
11. Hello Central, Give Me Heaven
12. I'm Working on a Building
13. You've Been Fooling Me, Baby
14. Longing for Old Virginia
15. March Winds Gonna Blow My Blues All Away
16. There'll Be Joy, Joy, Joy
17. Are You Tired of Me, My Darling
18. My Heart's Tonight in Texas
19. There's No Hiding Place Down Here
20. Cowboy's Wild Song to His Herd
21. Evening Bells Are Ringing
22. Mountains of Tennessee
23. I'll Be Home Someday
24. Faded Coat of Blue
25. Sailor Boy

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5742 in Music
• Released on: 2002-04-30
• Number of discs: 5
• Formats: Box set, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: 1.04 pounds

Amazon.com
Their setup was primitive enough--guitar, Autoharp, and vocals--but in the late '20s the trio of A.P. Delaney Carter, his wife Sara, and his sister-in-law Maybelle would change (chart?) the course of country music forever. They did it with haunting harmonies, incredible guitar playing (thanks to Maybelle's driving strums on her Gibson L-5 guitar), and a vast repertoire that included murder ballads, gospel tunes, love songs, and Appalachian folk tunes--many of which would be covered by musicians for decades to come. Unlike their musical peers in the late '20s and early '30s, the Carters weren't just playing "hillbilly" music; this was, quite simply, country music, and their timeless output still resonates with listeners today. JSP's bargain-priced, five-CD collection is easily the most complete, essential collection of their music available, capturing and remastering their RCA Victor recordings (their later, less-seminal sessions for Decca and the American Record Company are not included). Hearing five CDs' worth of music from the Carter Family is almost sensory overload--from the initial 1927 Bristol sessions, which Johnny Cash hailed as "the single most important event in the history of country music," to their depression-era recordings. Even today, Sara Carter's voice sounds aching, yet empowered. Whether they're yodeling through "The Foggy Mountain Top," singing a feminist anthem like "Single Girl, Married Girl," or harmonizing with Maybelle on "Worried Man Blues," you can hear the Carters' profound influence on country music. A must-have. --Jason Verlinde

Customer Reviews

The real song catchers, dont miss this at this price!
This is just about 1/2 to 2/3 of the hundreds of records that the Carters made between 1927 and 1941. Sara Carter later remembered they had made more than 600 records during those years. At the end of 1941, they all went their separate ways: Sara just to get out of the music and live with her new husband in Central California. AP returned to Maces Springs to run a general store and to try to get his relectant sons and daughter to play and sing music. Maybelle and her daughters kept playing Carter Family music until daughter June passed away last year.

I have just listened to every CD on this set one by one. Even though I have been playing this kind of music since the 1960s, even though I have had this or that single disc Carter Collection, even though I am judged as some kind of expert on old time music by some, I was shocked at how many tunes that I know as old time music tunes or bluegrass tunes identified with other artists were Carter Family versions of those tunes.

The Carters performed an immense service for the history and preservation of traditional American music, black and white.
They were not allowed to record already copywritten and published songs since Ralph Peer who recorded them for Victor Bluebird only got paid for publishing rights and could take only tunes he could claim publishing rights to. At the beginning the Carters were not such great song writers, although in the later 1930s when they began living in Del Rio Texas and broadcasting over Mexican border radio, they did write a number of great songs.

AP Carter traveled up and down the hills and hollers, mountains and valleys of Southern Virginia, Tennesee, North Carolina, and Kentucky asking Black and white working people, farmers, musicianers of all kinds, if they had songs for them to record. During the times late in the years covered by this set, when AP moved to Detroit to get cash paying work, and when his brother Eck and his wife Maybelle moved to DC where Eck got railroad work, they asked Southern people in those towns for songs.

During much of this time AP travelled with Leslie Riddle a black blues guitarist so that they were able to find songs African Americans as well as whites had in their hearts and minds. The Carters accepted Leslie as an equal. He lived in their home like a family member defying the Jim Crow Ettitique of the times. The Carters were all solid anti-confederate Lincoln Republicans. AP's dying words were "Don't vote Democrat" which in 1960 in Virginia meant don't vote Dixiecrat.

Old AP used to delight in the relatively small royalty checks all these songs brought him in the 1950s which he dutifully divided with Sara and Maybelle, even though all the songs were in his name. It is too bad he died in 1960 just before the folk revival brought all these songs back onto hundreds of records by folk singers, then by bluegrassers, then by country Western artists. Those checks would have gotten a lot bigger.



People brought these songs to the Carters, mostly to AP and Leslie Riddle, singing them on their porches, or in juke joints, or often when AP would stop after hearing a rumor that used saw mill parts could be obtained at a good price, something he was obessed with. Some folks did bring them the songs in yellowed old sheet music with crackled paper from the 19th Century, or as pages cut out of poetry books published deep in the past. Some of them would go back stage at the little school house and church shows the Carters did in the mountain towns during the depression and gave an old ballad not sung since their grandparents time. Some of them would request a song that the Carters didn't know, and AP might ask them to sing the tune right then and there.

On top of this, of course, AP Carter had been known since he was a boy for singing songs, teaching singing schools, being willing to walk all day up and down the Southside Virginia mountains to find a good singer or good music. This is how he found Sara Addington, his wife who was a hell of a singer. Then when AP's brother married Maybelle Addington who was known as the best guitar and banjo picker in the valleys around there (and no slouch on the fiddle and mandolin too)since she was a teenager (and she was only 18 when the Carters began recording) they were set. This may have been a plot, because a lot of the time AP would go up and over the mountains up and down walking all day to court a reluctant Sara, she would be sitting in the parlor singing or playing the autoharp, or learning guitar chords, along with her cousin Maybelle's guitar, banjo, or fiddle.

AP Carter was the real song catcher. These were a few of the hundreds of songs he caught, a few that were written by himself, Sara, and Maybelle.

So this is, in fact, an encyclopedia of the songs that were sung by Black and white working folks, farmers, musicians, rounders, up and down the mountains of Viriginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentcuky and the songs migrants took with them to Washington and Detroit. This is a treasure trove for anyone wnating to return to the lost world of those people, or to find songs from those years that speak to our lives and problems. Besides they are pretty good to listen to!

One good thing about this collection is that you hear a lot of the tunes they did in finger picking and slide guitar styles that Maybelle learned from Leslie Riddle. A lot of modern performers do them just flat picking, or the thumb and strum style Maybelle is best known for.

At this price, everyone with ears needs this.

Unbelievable value!
This is one of those stunning bargains which leaves you with gaping jaws and a big smile, if that's possible. For the price of TWO cds you get FIVE instead, all packed with 70 plus minutes of Carter Family gems, all in chronological order, and with fabulous sound quality which is BETTER than the American Rounder releases (and those releases only have about 45 minutes of music - I know, I bought some of them!). Can this really all be true? YES! It's true. The only thing you don't get in this dirt cheap box set is decent sleeve notes, but I'm not going to complain!
As for the actual music, it's unmissable early country music sung and played by Sara and Maybelle Carter with the help of A P Carter, husband of Sara. It has a deep magic about it - try a few if you never heard them, they'll hypnotise you. The harmonies are splendid, the guitars are luminous, it's pure like a mountain stream. You cannot go wrong with this one!

Musical History
I read the book "Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?" by Mark Zwonitner which is an outstanding history of the Carter Family. The Original Carter Family broke up when I was 5 years old so I had only heard very little about the Orginal Family but became very familar with Mother Maybelle and her daughters. After reading the book I shopped around and found this 5 CB set of the remastered RCA recordings. By the time you get to the #5 CD you fully understand what an impact the folks had the music industry. A.P., Sara, and Maybelle probably never realized how good they were at the time these songs were recorded. All these recording were done with primitive equipment and I would imagine most all were done on one take using a single microphone. There are several songs included in these recording that will absolutely knock your socks off if you listen to them a couple of times and listen closely. If you enjoy the music of Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Roy Acuff and other legends do yourself a favor and get the Carter Family RCA recordings.