The Carter Family on Border Radio is a collection of transcription recordings from A.P. Carter, Sara Carter, and Maybelle Carter, the Maces Spring, Virginia trio whose Victor and ARC sessions had established the foundational repertoire of commercial American country music, documenting their later performances on the border radio stations broadcasting from just across the Mexican border into the United States during the late 1930s and early 1940s. A.P. Carter sings and provides song direction; Sara Carter sings lead and plays autoharp; Maybelle Carter sings harmony and plays guitar in the scratch-and-strum style she developed as one of acoustic music's most widely imitated techniques. The border radio format allowed the Carter Family to reach audiences across the continental United States at broadcasting power unavailable to American-licensed stations, extending their influence well beyond what their commercial recordings alone could achieve.