Give Me Roses While I Live · I Never Will Marry

The Carter Family’s first records were made for Victor, with the producer Ralph Peer, at 410 State Street in Bristol, Tennessee, on 1 and 2 August 1927. The group was A.P. Carter; his wife Sara, who sang and played autoharp; and Sara’s cousin Maybelle, who was married to A.P.’s brother Ezra and sang and played guitar. They cut six sides, and Victor issued them in pairs that autumn: “The Wandering Boy” with “The Poor Orphan Child” in September, “Single Girl, Married Girl” with “The Storms Are on the Ocean” in October, and “Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow” with “Little Log Cabin by the Sea” in November.

For the next seven years they recorded only for Victor. Most sessions were at the company’s studio in the Trinity Baptist Church building in Camden, New Jersey, with field trips to Atlanta in 1929 and 1932, Memphis in 1930, and Charlotte and Louisville in 1931. The Camden sessions of 9 and 10 May 1928 produced “Keep on the Sunny Side,” issued with “River of Jordan,” and “Wildwood Flower,” which Victor coupled with “Forsaken Love” in January 1929. “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” followed in 1929 and “Worried Man Blues” with “The Cannon Ball Blues” in 1930. “Wabash Cannon Ball” was recorded in Atlanta in November 1929 but not issued until 1932. In Louisville in June 1931 they recorded two sides with Jimmie Rodgers. Their last Victor session of the period was in Camden on 11 December 1934. Victor kept the records in print well after that, recoupling older sides on Bluebird and on the Montgomery Ward mail-order label.

In May 1935 the trio recorded in New York for the American Record Corporation. ARC spread those sides across its budget labels, among them “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?,” later known as “Can the Circle Be Unbroken (Bye and Bye).” Decca came next, with sessions at its Pythian Temple studio in New York in June 1936 and June 1937, and a long session in Charlotte on 8 June 1938. The Decca singles included “No Depression” with “There’s No One Like Mother to Me” (June 1936), “Hello Stranger” with “Never Let the Devil Get the Upper Hand of You” (January 1938) and “Coal Miner’s Blues” with “They Call Her Mother” (September 1938).

By then the family had been living apart for years. Sara left A.P. in early 1932 and after that rejoined him only for major engagements and recording sessions; she remarried in 1939. In the late 1930s the group worked on XERA in Del Rio, Texas, a border station that transmitted from the Mexican side and reached much of the United States. The children joined the act on XERA: Sara’s daughter Janette and Maybelle’s daughters Helen, June and Anita. Columbia recorded the trio in Chicago on 3 and 4 October 1940 for release on OKeh and Conqueror. Their final session together was for Victor in New York on 14 October 1941. Bluebird drew three singles from it: “Keep on the Firing Line” with “Fifty Miles of Elbow Room” (July 1942), “Lonesome Homesick Blues” with “Why Do You Cry, Little Darling?” (February 1943) and “The Wave on the Sea” with “The Rambling Boy” (May 1944). The group broke up in 1943, and Maybelle went on to perform with her daughters.

A.P. and Sara recorded together again from 1952, with their children Janette and Joe, as the A.P. Carter Family. Those sessions, at WAIN in Columbia, Kentucky, and WOPI in Bristol, were issued on the small Acme label. The last were made in Bristol in 1956, among them a two-part record with Mrs. Jimmie Rodgers labelled as recorded on 20 April 1956. A.P. died in 1960, and the Carter Family was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.