Anita Carter

She was born Ina Anita Carter in March 1933 at Maces Spring, Virginia, the third daughter of Ezra “Eck” Carter and Maybelle Carter of the original Carter Family. As a child she sang with her sisters Helen and June on the family’s border-radio broadcasts from Texas, and when the Carter Family trio broke up in March 1943 and Maybelle formed an act with her daughters, Anita was given the upright bass, which she played standing on a box before she was tall enough to reach it. The group worked radio across the South, took on Chet Atkins as lead guitarist and joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1950. At the act’s first RCA Victor session, in Atlanta on 2 February 1949, she played bass and sang, and that October two sides were issued featuring her.

Her own records began at RCA Victor in Nashville on 23 August 1950 with “Somebody’s Crying” and “Johnnie’s Got a Sweetheart,” produced by Steve Sholes with Atkins on guitar. On 26 January 1951 she and Hank Snow recorded “Down the Trail of Achin’ Hearts” and “Bluebird Island,” the two sides of RCA Victor 48-0441, which reached numbers two and four on the country chart. When the family moved to Columbia she cut her own sides there with Don Law producing, among them “Keep It a Secret” (December 1952) and Hank Williams’s “There’ll Be No Teardrops Tonight” (October 1953). In 1952 she sang on The Kate Smith Evening Hour on national television, including a duet with Williams on his “I Can’t Help It.” Back at RCA Victor from 1955 to 1956 she recorded with Atkins producing, made another duet record with Snow and sang in the trio Nita, Rita and Ruby, and in 1957 she recorded “Blue Doll” for Cadence. With her family she also worked shows with Elvis Presley.

In the early 1960s Mercury signed her as a solo voice for the folk market. Shelby Singleton produced her October 1962 sessions in Nashville, which gave her the album Anita Carter Sings Folk Songs Old and New (December 1962), with “(Love’s) Ring of Fire,” “All My Trials” and “Fair and Tender Ladies”; her version of “Ring of Fire” did not chart, and Johnny Cash’s recording of 1963 became the hit. In January 1964 she and Helen recorded Anita and Helen Carter of the Carter Family for Mercury in New York, produced by Milton Okun. She also made Together Again (RCA Victor, 1962) with Snow, and sang with Cash on “Another Man Done Gone” in August 1962. With her mother and sisters, billed as the Carter Family from about 1960 and touring with Cash from 1961, she sang on Columbia albums such as Keep on the Sunny Side (1963), and later on Travelin’ Minstrel Band (1971) and Three Generations (1974). With June and Helen she wrote “Rosanna’s Going Wild,” a 1968 single for Cash.

Returning to RCA Victor from 1965, she recorded with Felton Jarvis and Atkins producing; “I’m Gonna Leave You” reached number 44 in 1966, and “I Got You,” a duet with Waylon Jennings cut on 9 February 1968, reached number four. She sang backing vocals on Porter Wagoner’s albums of 1967 and 1968. In 1968 she moved to United Artists, where Bob Montgomery produced her and her duet with Johnny Darrell, “Coming of the Roads,” reached number 50, and then to Capitol, where “Tulsa County” reached number 41 in 1970 and Pete Drake produced the album So Much Love (1972). Her later recordings appeared on House of Cash, and Bear Family gathered her solo work in Appalachian Angel: Her Recordings 1950–1972 & 1996 (2004). She died on 29 July 1999 in Hendersonville, Tennessee, aged 66.