When I came across the attractive album pictured above, The Famous Carter Family by the Carter Family and turned the album over on the back, I could scarcely believe what I was reading.  Besides the usual credits, the listing of the songs also gave the dates when they were recorded:  all within a two- or three-week period in 1928.  And the songwriter in all cases was A. P. Carter.  Could any one man really have written all of these incredible songs? 

One of the songs, “Wildwood Flower” has perhaps the loveliest melody in all of country music.  At the time, I knew the song only by reputation, and mainly because of “Wildwood Weed” (1974) – which is basically about marijuana – a #7 hit song by Jim Stafford that mentions the song:  “The name of this song is ‘The Wildwood Flower’ / Now ‘The Wildwood Flower’ is an old country classic / It gained a whole new popularity / The song isn’t any more popular / But the flower is doin’ real good”.  The song “Wildwood Weed” was written and originally recorded way back in 1964 by country singer and comedian Don Bowman. 

But that was just the beginning.  One of the songs is so timeless that it is hard to imagine anyone writing it:  “Keep on the Sunny Side”.  There are three bonafide classic gospel songs:  “Can the Circle be Unbroken”, “Lonesome Valley”, and “Gospel Ship”.  Another song was one I knew as a Woody Guthrie number, “Worried Man Blues”.  The other songs I was not familiar with but quickly learned to love as much as the others.  I gathered up a few more Carter Family albums and learned what I could about them. 

I started correcting people that the song “Will the Circle be Unbroken” is actually named “Can the Circle be Unbroken”.  Eventually I came across the “Will” title so much that I decided that I needed to look it up.  It turns out, according to Wikipedia, that “Can the Circle be Unbroken” was reworked by A. P. Carter from the hymn “Will the Circle be Unbroken?” that dates from 1907. 

(February 2015)