The Carter Family

The Carter Family was one of the foundational groups of American country and folk music, formed in the early 1920s in the Clinch Mountain region of southwestern Virginia. The core trio consisted of A.P. Carter, his wife Sara Carter, and Sara's cousin Maybelle Carter, who married A.P.'s brother Ezra. Their 1927 recordings at the Bristol Sessions, alongside Jimmie Rodgers, are widely regarded as the moment commercial country music began.

The group's sound was built on close vocal harmonies, A.P.'s gift for arranging and collecting traditional Appalachian songs, and Maybelle's innovative guitar technique, later known as the «Carter scratch», in which she picked the melody on the bass strings while strumming rhythm on the treble strings. This style became a foundation for generations of country and folk guitarists. Their repertoire drew on hymns, ballads, and rural songs passed down through oral tradition, which A.P. sought out and adapted, giving many of these pieces their first widely known recorded versions.

Songs such as «Wildwood Flower», «Keep on the Sunny Side», and «Can the Circle Be Unbroken» became standards of American music, covered by countless later artists across country, folk, bluegrass, and rock. The original trio disbanded in the early 1940s, but Maybelle continued performing with her daughters, eventually connecting the Carter lineage to Johnny Cash's family and extending the group's influence well into the modern era.