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Helen Carter

Musician · 1927–1998 · Maces Spring, Virginia
Best known for Guitar Songwriter Harmony Vocals

Helen Carter was the eldest of Maybelle Carter's three daughters and, by the reckoning of the people who played beside her, the most complete musician of the four women who made up Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters — an accordionist and guitarist who arranged the group's vocals, carried its repertoire in her head, and wrote songs that charted for Johnny Cash, Ann-Margret and Bob Gallion.

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  • Born Helen Myrl Carter on September 12, 1927 in Maces Spring, Virginia, the first child of Maybelle and Ezra Carter; died in Nashville on June 2, 1998, aged 70.
  • On the radio at twelve, singing harmony behind her sisters twice a week for fifteen dollars, and she never stopped: her working life ran from 1937 to the year she died.
  • When the original Carter Family broke up in 1943, Maybelle rebuilt the act around her daughters, and the parts fell out by temperament: Helen's musicianship, Anita's lead voice, June's comedy.
  • The group worked its way up through WRNL in Richmond, the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round and Tennessee Barn Dance on WNOX in Knoxville, and KWTO in Springfield, Missouri, taking a young Chet Atkins on electric guitar in 1949.
  • They joined the Grand Ole Opry on May 29, 1950; at twenty-two Helen was among the youngest members ever inducted.
  • She played accordion through the early years, then moved to guitar across the late 1950s and 60s at her mother's urging, so that Maybelle's thumb-lead style would have somewhere to go.
  • She arranged the group's vocals, and her signature was a lead handed from one sister to another mid-phrase without the listener noticing, over arrangements that changed key more often than the material suggested.
  • Atkins put it plainly: "She was the best musician in the bunch, I guess. She played accordion and piano and guitar just like Maybelle. She added a lot to the group." Anita's version was shorter: "Helen was like a book. She remembered everything … all the songs and all the keys."
  • Also proficient on autoharp, piano and mandolin, and the sister most concerned with keeping the old Carter repertoire intact.
  • As a songwriter she placed "Poor Old Heartsick Me" with Margie Bowes (No. 10, 1959), "Loving You (Was Worth This Broken Heart)" with Bob Gallion (No. 7, 1961), "Wall to Wall Love" for Gallion again (No. 5, 1962, with June), and "What Am I Supposed to Do?" with Ann-Margret (No. 19, 1962).
  • "Rosanna's Going Wild," written with June and Anita, reached No. 2 for Johnny Cash in 1968; "A Song to Mama," written with June and her husband Glenn Jones, charted for the Carter Family in 1971. More than sixty artists recorded her songs, among them Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Ray Price and the Byrds.
  • Recorded for Tennessee, Republic, OKeh, Hickory, Starday and Columbia along the way, cut two solo albums for Old Homestead — This Is for You Mama (1979) and Clinch Mountain Memories (1993) — and worked in the 1960s as half of the Blondettes with Dolores "Tootsie" Dinning for MGM.
  • A fixture on Cash's network television show and specials, where she also sang duets with him, including "Way Worn Traveler."
  • Recorded by the Smithsonian Institution alongside Maybelle in 1975; took a gold record for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Vol. II; American Music Award for favourite country group in 1973 and a Music City News gospel award in 1980.
  • Married Glenn Jones of Baxley, Georgia in 1950 and raised four sons. The eldest, Kenny, had just signed with Monument Records when he was killed in a car wreck at sixteen.
  • She taught Rosanne Cash guitar, and her songs outlived her on screen: "Heart Full of Shame" in Northfork (2003) and "Juke Box Blues," written with her mother, in Walk the Line (2005).

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