Praise for Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?
“[A] splendid new book that provides a definitive telling of the Carters’ story. . . . Zwonitzer and Hirshberg . . . trace beautifully the Carters’ music and their lives, which were intertwined in a way we rarely find with pop stars anymore. Along the way, the authors paint a detailed, fascinating picture of one more forgotten America that spawned an incredibly powerful voice in song.”
—Daily News (New York)
“[An] enthralling, fact-filled, creatively conceived biography of the pioneer family of country music. . . . This is a must-read book for American music fans . . . by turns funny, serious, sad, happy, joyful, inspiring, and depressing. It will entertain you and inform you on every page.”
—The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
“[An] absorbing and perceptive look at the original Carter Family’s often troubled lives and their musical legacy.”
—Chicago Tribune
“In Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? authors Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg fill a void in the five decade history of radio and country music. . . . This book is more than a biography of a family. It’s an encyclopedia of great and near-great country music stars. . . . it’s as American as apple pie and covers Dixie like the dew. You’ll treasure it as a permanent part of your souvenirs.”
—The Roanoke Times
“[T]horoughly researched. . . . This book is an essential work of musical Americana.”
—BookPage
“This gem of a book brilliantly recounts the lives of three special people—A.P. and Sara Carter, plus Maybelle Carter, Sara’s cousin and A.P.’s sister-in-law. . . . The authors . . . obviously grasp an essential point—that to understand the Carter Family’s music, it is first necessary to understand their lives in the mountains of Virginia. . . . The music . . .—and the performers’ lives that were shaped, then torn, by fame—is, in the hands of Zwonitzer and Hirshberg, nothing less than thrilling to read about. This is one of the best works of nonfiction in 2002.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg’s Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? is a compassionate biography of the Carter Family that is by turns sweet and melancholy. The authors have captured the life and times of these remarkable people and made it read like one of the Carters’ own epic mountain ballads. . . . Zwonitzer and Hirshberg bring to life a world long gone. The uncluttered grace of the Carters’ music finds its way into the cadence of their prose. The stories are told with the relaxed good nature of someone sitting on a porch, talking about their neighbors. A.P. Carter’s desolate loneliness and his wife’s quiet desperation fuel this tale that has a soundtrack more evocative and poignant than O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“I found myself moved and fascinated by Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? . . . It is a superb history and an evocation of a purely American art form, practiced by three generations of a uniquely American family.”
—The Sun (Baltimore)
“Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?—the biography of the original Carter Family—rises above most music biographies. . . . It’s a tragic tale of pride, success, and love—unrequited love, romantic love, love of family, and love of music.”
—The Charlotte Observer
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Pleasant
Sara
The Homeplace
Maybelle
Mr. Peer
New Orthophonic Victor Southern Series
Home Manufacture
Fire on the Mountain
Sara’s Problem
From a Business Standpoint
Stuff
XERA
A New Act
On the Road . . .
. . . To Nashville
Mama Maybelle
Pleasant on the Porch
On the Road Again
Mother of Mine
About Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg
Index
For Gerri
Acknowledgments
Over lunches, over and over, my friend Charles Hirshberg told me about this family down in Virginia, the Carters. It took me about five years to get cracking on the story. In the meantime, he was gathering facts. If not for his vision and enthusiasm, we would have missed out on the memories of dozens of people who have since died. Chuck’s name is deservedly on the cover of this book. Chuck’s wife, Annette Foglino, lived with this book as long as anyone, and her counsel was always wise.
The Original Carter Family left behind so much good music, it surely would have been greedy for a biographer to ask more of them. Still, the lack of primary written sources presented a problem. The original Carters—Sara, Maybelle, and A.P.—gave few interviews, kept no diaries, wrote few letters, and saved almost no correspondence. Whatever notebooks A.P. Carter saved were burned in a fire at a small tenant house where he stashed them near the end of his life. So determining the many, many sources of all that great music was a bit like detective work. And like an officer working a cold case should, I’d like to acknowledge those who gathered clues well in advance of me. At the top of that list is Ed Kahn, a scholar to be sure, but a gentleman above all. Beginning in the early ’60s, Ed conducted a number of interviews with Maybelle and Sara. He went song by song, taking time to get their best recollections of where they’d heard each one (or how they came to find it or write it). He collected acetate transcription disks from Mexico, and stories from people who worked with the Carter Family at recording sessions in Camden or at the border radio stations in Texas. All this he made available to me, as well as material from the John Edwards Memorial Foundation. He also freely gave of his time, his wisdom, and his encouragement. And I thank him for it all. Mike Seeger, who was with Ed at many of those interview sessions, was another generous and thoughtful contributor. He has long been a champion of Carter Family music and has done more than anybody outside the family to keep it alive. Scholars whose work I benefited from include Charles Wolfe, who has uncovered so much of the original sheet music for songs that A.P. might have used for inspiration; Bill C. Malone, whose writing about early country music is the finest and most lucid available; and Nolan Porterfield, author of the seminal Jimmie Rodgers biography. Thanks also to the staff at the Southern Historic Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
There were a number of people in the music business who spent hours telling their stories of life with the Carters. Chief among these were Chet Atkins, Becky Bowman Swearinger, John McEuen, and John Cohen. I would also like to thank Ralph Peer II for sharing his memories of his father.
Scores of friends and neighbors in Poor Valley (and Rich Valley and California) offered insights into the life and times of the Carters, including Clyde and Elsie Gardner, Minnie Curtis, Ruby Parker, Daphne Stapleton, Walter Meade, Gladys Greiner, and especially Peggy Hensley and her father, Chester Hensley, the finest tour guide in all of Scott County. I thank them all.
I am deeply indebted to Bill Clifton, who loved A.P. Carter and who helped me understand A.P.’s creative genius and his stubborn pride.
But in the end, the success of this enterprise depended on the family itself. Generations of Carters contributed to this book. It could not have been done without them; for me, th
eir memories brought A.P., Sara, and Maybelle to life. Dale Carter and Barbara Powell (along with her husband, Glenn) are the sort of genealogists every family should have. They are diligent, exacting, and, best of all, always hunting a good story. Barbara, especially, shared her deep and human understanding of her aunt Sara. Vernon and F.M. Bays, Fern Salyers, Paul Hartsock, Lois Hensley, Bill Jett, and the irrepressible Theda Carter all shared their stories. And Stella Bayes Morris sat for days on end recalling the tale of her own parents and siblings. Her eye for detail knows no limits. Thanks to June Carter’s daughters, Carlene and Rosie, and Anita Carter’s daughter, Lorrie. And thanks also to Tom T. Hall and his wife, Dixie, and to Peggy Knight, each of whom the Carters count as family.
This book had two guardian angels. They were, of course, Carters. Rita Forrester and Flo Wolfe are granddaughters of A.P. and Sara, and truer testaments to the basic kindness of the family could not be found. They took time away from their own hectic lives to drive me all over Scott County, to make introductions to the people I should know, and to make sure those people answered my questions. They kept me well fed in all ways. Rita is an exemplary Poor Valley woman: always willing to do for others. Flo and her husband, John, opened their home to me on each and every visit I made. John laughed at me only on the occasions I most deserved it. A more stand-up man you will not meet.
Each of the children of Eck and Maybelle and of A.P. and Sara spent hours politely (and, it seemed, happily) answering insistent queries. Despite busy professional and personal lives and nagging illnesses, June Carter Cash and her husband, Johnny Cash, answered calls and letters for more than ten years. Joe Carter proved the finest breakfast companion a person could have and a gifted raconteur. Janette Carter, meanwhile, is the hero of this enterprise. Just before A.P. Carter died, he implored his youngest daughter to keep his music alive. She has done her level best to do that. For more than twenty-five years, with little help and less money, she has run a weekly music program at the Carter Fold and an annual festival. Her effort has been exhausting to both body and soul, and the last thing she needed was extra demands on her time. But she helped Charles and me with anything we asked. And I can never thank her enough.
Not all of the children lived to see the completion of this book. Gladys Carter Millard, Helen Carter Jones, and Anita Carter are gone now, so I hope a little piece of them lives on in these pages.
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I would also like to thank my own friends and family. Thanks to editor Charles Adams, who saw potential in this book when few did and guided it to completion with an expert hand, and also to Simon & Schuster stalwart Cheryl Weinstein and copy editor Deirdre Hare, who saved me from myself. My friend and agent, Philippa Brophy, had to wait fifteen years to get a manuscript out of me. I thank her for her patience and her unflagging concern. Scott Yardley listened, as did Bruce Shaw, Yuka Nishino, and Curt Pesmen. Laura McKellar added research and good cheer. Richard Ben Cramer showed me what it takes.
To my in-laws—Rose Kukuc, Don Kukuc, Barbara and Robert Denninger—thanks for baby-sitting me and my children. My parents, Gary and Jean Zwonitzer, allowed me to find my own way. It’s only now, watching my own children grow up, that I understand how hard that is. My brothers, Mike and Scot, showed me what it means to face down a challenge, and they are more heroic to me than they know.
Most important, thanks to Sam and Lila, who, despite all, love me best. So right back at ya. And finally, to my wife, Gerri, words will not do justice. I hope you know. And don’t worry. It will get better.
The Original Carter Family. Maybelle (sitting) with A.P. and Sara (Flo Wolfe)
Ezra “Eck” Carter and Maybelle, in Texas (Lorrie Davis Bennett)
Prologue
My dear friends, my patients, my supplicants: Your many, many letters—many hundreds of them since yesterday—lie here before me, touching testimony of your pain, your grief, the wretchedness that is visited upon the innocent.
It was 1939, the tenth year of the Great Depression. There were 20 million radio sets in American homes, and every day a single voice, broadcast over the most powerful station in the Western hemisphere, burst into those homes as though it had a God-given right to be there. It was the voice of a small, bearded man speaking from a luxuriously appointed private office in a mansion on the banks of the Rio Grande. The voice was at once seductive and chiding, for he wished you to know that he was a compassionate physician, a healer of thousands; at the same time, he was an impatient builder of empires who would heal thousands more—no, millions more—if only they had the good sense to come unto him. This was the voice of “Doctor” John Romulus Brinkley.
It was, alas, the voice of a quack, and a huckster and a scoundrel. But give the scoundrel his due, for Dr. Brinkley was also a genius in his way. In the midst of the Depression, he was hustling a million dollars a year from ordinary folk who had little money to spare. He’d sold them gallons of nostrums for gas, hemorrhoids, and just plain tiredness, as well as reams of rustic advice on female maladies. But his “specialty” was a male problem, a particular form of lethargy that sets in on men of a certain age, in a certain part of their bodies.
What is the use of pussyfooting around the subject? Why not drag it into the open? . . . No man wants to be a capon. Contrast the castrated animal—of any species—with the natural male or female. Note the difference, for instance, between the stallion and the gelding. The former stands erect, neck arched, mane flowing, chomping the bit, stamping the ground, seeking the female, while the gelding stands around half asleep, cowardly, and listless.
Doctor (he preferred to be called just “Doctor”) had invented sundry “remedies” for male impotence. His most daring cure called for an operation in which Doctor grafted goat testicles onto the human items. For this, and like surgical services, he had charged some fifteen thousand men anywhere from $750 to $2,000 apiece. From an impoverished Smoky Mountain boyhood of corn bread and turnip greens, the fifty-three-year-old Brinkley had transformed himself into a multimillionaire. He owned mansions, limousines, an airplane, a yacht once used by presidents.
Even as a measure of desperation, it is hard to comprehend such success as Doctor Brinkley’s unless one comprehends the power of radio. In the 1930s, radio was still a miracle. Electricity hadn’t yet reached the country’s remotest parts, but radio could wriggle its way into places not yet plugged in to the current of modern America. A single battery-powered radio set could pluck sounds out of the ether, just like magic; it provided unimaginable news from unimagined places, jokes of surpassing hilarity, and music that made listeners dance, cry, or just plain sigh. Americans didn’t listen to a voice that came over a radio in the same way they listened to ordinary voices. And if there was empathy in such a voice—if it seemed to understand “the pain, the grief, the wretchedness that is visited upon the innocent” in a time of national hardship—then that voice could have inestimable power over them. Doctor understood all of this, and he exploited radio like nobody’s business.
He had begun his unlikely enterprise in a small, dusty farm town in the middle of Kansas. But by 1930 his radio-medico empire had made him one of the wealthiest men in the Sunflower State, and one of the most controversial. When the state board stripped him of his medical license, Brinkley staged a last-minute race for governor and was nearly elected as a write-in candidate. A few months later, feeling grossly underappreciated in his adopted state, Doctor moved to the Texas border town of Del Rio. A few miles south, in Villa Acuña, Mexico, he set to building a radio transmitter beyond the reach of the United States government and its bothersome regulations that limited stations to a puny fifty thousand watts. Two hundred thousand Depression dollars later, XERA, Brinkley’s million-watt “Sunshine Station Between the Nations,” thundered across North America. Locals claimed the XERA transmitter had turned on the headlights of cars parked in Del Rio and made children’s bedsprings hum in San Antonio. All across Texas, they said, you could pick up the signal on a barbed-wire fence. In actual fa
ct, there were nights when XERA nearly obliterated Atlanta’s WSB and, 1,500 miles north, elbowed aside Chicago’s WGN. As it crossed into Canada, the signal still had enough juice to muddy CKAC in Montreal. There had never been anything like XERA, nor would there ever be again. XERA reached farmers in the Mississippi Delta, steelworkers in Detroit, bridge builders in San Francisco, and coal miners in Alberta, Canada. The station got mail from every state in the nation, and fourteen other countries to boot.
By 1939, South Texas had blossomed with an outlandish industry built on XERA and other border stations that had sprung up around it. XERA’s roster included the Reverend Eugene F. Smith, who hawked a book on how to prepare for the Second Coming (“A month from now might be too late!”), and soothsayer Rose Dawn the Star Girl, Patroness of the Order of Maya, who promised to personally pray for any listener who sent her a dollar. Carter’s Champion Chicks, a company that sold live poultry, also leased time from Brinkley; so did the makers of Kolorbak hair dye; Peruna, a tonic that prevented colds; and Sinose, a preparation guaranteed to clear up the sinuses in the unlikely event that Peruna failed to prevent infection. And just in case Sinose failed, too, the Sterling Company offered life insurance for only a penny a day.
Of course, even such superior products and services as these were insufficient to attract an audience. For that, entertainment was needed, and no entertainment was found to be more enticing to country people than country music. Consequently, Del Rio had become the “Hillbilly Hollywood.” There was Cowboy Slim Rinehart (“Empty Saddles”), Patsy Montana (“I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart”), and the Pickards (“How Many Biscuits Can You Eat This Morning?”); there were the J. E. Mainer’s Mountaineers, Doc and Carl, and countless others, all long forgotten. And there was also the Carter Family.
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