The Carter Family was a pioneering group that profoundly influenced country, bluegrass, and folk music. They were the first musicians to record the traditional hymns and folk tunes of the South—the songs everyone knew
—and, by doing so, they gave the people of the Appalachians a sense of cultural pride.
The Carter Family were Alvin Pleasant Carter, known as A. P. (1891–1960), his wife, Sara Dougherty Carter (1898–1979), and her distant cousin Maybelle Addington Carter (1909–78)...