Songs of the Famous Carter Family was released by Columbia in August 1961 (CL 1664) under the names of Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, with Maybelle Carter, a member of the original Carter Family from the late 1920s to the early 1940s, joining them. All twelve songs were recorded on 10 February 1961 at Bradley Film & Recording Studio in Nashville. Lester Flatt played guitar, Earl Scruggs banjo or guitar, Curly Seckler mandolin, Buck Graves dobro, Paul Warren fiddle and Jake Tullock bass. BGD lists Carter on autoharp, while a Discogs note, citing Mark Zwonitzer’s Carter Family biography, credits her with the guitar solo on “You Are My Flower.”
Ten of the songs are credited to A. P. Carter alone, among them “Keep on the Sunny Side,” “Foggy Mountain Top,” “The Homestead on the Farm,” “Worried Man Blues” and “On the Rock Where Moses Stood.” “False-Hearted Lover” and “Pickin’ in the Wildwood” carry A. P. Carter’s name together with Flatt’s and Scruggs’s. Flatt sings lead on the vocals, with Seckler on tenor and Scruggs on baritone in the group numbers; “False-Hearted Lover,” “Pickin’ in the Wildwood” and “The Storms Are on the Ocean” are instrumentals. Wikipedia describes the album as part of Louise Scruggs’s plan to give the group a facelift by adding older folk songs to their repertoire.
Tracklist
- 1 Keep on the Sunny Side alt version 3:06
- 2 Foggy Mountain Top alt version 2:24
- 3 False Hearted Lover (with Mother Maybelle Carter) 2:21
- 4 Jimmie Brown the Newsboy alt version 3:20
- 5 You Are My Flower alt version 2:31
- 6 On the Rock Where Moses Stood alt version 2:25
- 7 Forsaken Love (with Mother Maybelle Carter) 2:25
- 8 The Homestead on the Farm alt version 2:08
- 9 Pickin' In The Wildwood (with Mother Maybelle Carter) 2:15
- 10 Worried Man Blues alt version 1:59
- 11 The Storms are on the Ocean alt version 2:43
- 12 Gathering Flowers From The Hillside alt version 2:42
