The Carter Family was a very influential singing group that really put country and western music on the map and is credited with popularizing blue grass music.  This 2005 episode of the PBS show American Experience traces the origins of the group, as well as the problems that fame inflicted upon them.

The heart of the Carter family was A. P. Carter.  He was the patriarch and driving force behind the trio.  It was A. P. who convinced his wife Sara and his sister-in-law Maybelle to travel to in July of 1927 Bristol TN when he heard that a record company representative was holding auditions there.  Ralph Peer liked what he heard.  Sara had a haunting voice that really gave life to the old folk songs that they sand, and Maybelle was a self-taught guitar player with a unique sound.  He paid the group $50 for each song they recorded, a tidy sum in those days especially for people trying to scrape out a living in the Appalachian mountains.

Victor Records released two records by the Carter Family in late 1927 and early 1928.  It was the second of these, containing The Storms Are on the Ocean and Single Girl, Married Girl that hit a cord with the listening public and sold very well.  Peer contacted the group and had them come up to Camden, New Jersey to record some more songs.  It was at these sessions that the group sang many of their signature songs that would become C&W standards.  The group went on recording and preforming for years, and were the first true country stars.

Though their popularity was everything A. P. could have imagined and hoped for, his personal life was in a shambles.   On the road looking for new songs to record, often for weeks at a time, Sara grew lonesome and eventually had an affair.  When her lover moved across the country, Sara didn't follow him, but she did move out of the Carter house, leaving her children behind.  They would still record together, since the money was so good, but they never reconciled.

Before I viewed this documentary, I had no idea who the Carter Family were, or what their place in musical history was.  The show gives a good background on their lives and achievements, but is still incomplete.  When the program was over I had more questions that when it started.

The show spends a lot of time (too much some would argue) and the marital friction between A.P. and Sara, yet the causes behind this are never fully explained.  It could be that no one really knows what went on, but I found it very odd that a married woman would leave her children and eventually file for divorce back in the 1930's.  They also spend a lot of time discussing how miserable A. P. was after Sara left him and how he always hoped that she'd come back, but she apparently tried to reconcile for three years after departing.  That left me scratching my head.  With all of this time devoted to A. P. and Sara, it is ironic that they barely mentioned Maybelle's personal life.  They state that she was married, but never talk about her husband, or if she had any children.

Another area that wasn't covered as fully as it should have been was their financial situation.  Did the Carter family make any money off of the hundreds of thousands of records that they sold?  Did they still have to farm in order to make ends meet?  The show mentions the stock market crash and the depression, but never discusses the impact of these events on the Carters.  I assume their record sales plummeted during the depression.  How did they handle this?  Did they tour more?  Record more songs?  Or just wait it out?

There are also some people who were important in the Carter's lives who just seem to disappear.    Ralph Peer gave them their start and recorded many of the group's songs, but he isn't mentioned in the later part of the show.  Did they have a falling out?  It doesn't say.  Another figure who appears in the show was Esley Riddle, a one legged African-American musician who accompanied A. P. on his journeys searching for songs.  After an extensive introduction to this person, he isn't mentioned again in the rest of the show.  I'm still not sure what his significance was in the story of the Carter family, or what happened to him.

One thing that this documentary did that I really disliked was the way they handled reenactments.  I understand that there isn't a lot of film footage of the Carter Family, and that restaging some events gives the viewers something to look at.  In this case, they never stated that what we are seeing is a staged event, and even worse, they've aged these reenactments to make the film look old.  They've added scratches, grain and a lot of spots and specks to make this contemporary footage look like vintage film.  I can't imagine why they would do that.  It was as if they were trying to fool people into thinking that they actually had some very rare film.  A documentary should never try to fool its viewers.  What's the point in that?

Audio:

The stereo soundtrack sounded fine.  The vintage records of the Carter Family has a lot of pops and other audio defects, but the contemporary interviews and recordings sounded fine.

Video:

I was surprised to discover that they was presented in widescreen.  The anamorphically enhanced image looked very good, with a lot of detail and sharp lines.  There was a couple of instances of cross-coloration when panning across some black and white photos, but this was minor.

Extras:

This disc has a good assortment of bonus material.  First there is Mother Maybelle's Guitar, a nin-minute featurette where some musicians including Mike Seeger and Earl and Randy Scruggs talk about Maybelle's guitar style.

The Guitar in American Music is a two minute short that covers the history and rise of the guitar in music made in America.

The extras conclude with The Carter Family Fold: A Wholesome Family Experiance. This is an eight-minute short about the non-profit C&W music venue that Janette Carter, A. P. and Sara's daughter, still runs.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, this is a nice introduction to the Carter Family, but it isn't complete.  They spent too much time focusing on A.P. and Sara's marriage and not enough time on other aspects of the group.  At the end of the show, Maybelle is still an enigma.  Fans of the group will want to rent this for the rare photos and accurate time-line, but people who aren't interested in country music won't find this very engaging.