Great choice, Lew, nicely done by yourself, plus including other banjo links was a pleasant surprise.  The Carter Family can never be heard enough!  I found Carlene Carter recordings with words suited for a female singer. (The link with Carlene on autoharp was recorded at the Grand Ole Opry, a place I actually got to visit last month.) The idea of 3/4 timing for the verses came to mind when contemplating the weeping expressed in the lyrics.

JanetB Nicely played and sang, and tab to boot! I've never been able to write tab because I mostly can't figure out what my fingers are doing. I mean, I can get a lot of a tune tabbed out about right, but there will be areas where I can't work it out.

This TOTW has had a lot of hits and likes in a week, but only your comment. Are BHOers looking mostly for instrumental tunes, do you think? Or is this century old song not considered old time? I play a lot of songs from other genres, such as old rock, blues, even some jazz tunes like Caravan, Waiting For the Sunrise, and I'll See You In My Dreams. Would clawhammer versions of songs in those non-old-time genres be more or less interesting to BHOers than the Carter Family? Questions, questions, questions....

Thanks, Lew!

Good questions. We all seem to find our banjo niches and favorite genres. I only knew a few people who really appreciated the Carter Family, including myself. They were considered country, “the first family of country music.” It’s surprising how many songs many of us know that are attributed to their 1920’s and 30’s recordings, and many people may not know their source. And I may not clawhammer the ones I know, but my 3-finger picking is old-timish; it’s certainly not bluegrassy.

Here’s are some of the Carter Family songs I like from the first “CD” that many of us would know:
Bury Me Beneath the Weeping Willow
The Storms are on the Ocean
Single Girl, Married Girl
The Wandering Boy
Meet Me By The Moonlight
Little Darling Pal of Mine
Keep on the Sunny Side
John Hardy was a Desperate Little Man
I Ain’t Going To Work Tomorrow
Will You Miss Me What I’m Gone
Wildwood Flower
My Clinch Mountain Home
I’m Thinking Tonight of my Blue Eyes

In the second CD , the second song is this TOTW.

Personally, I’d be happy if more of these songs were covered as a TOTW, but it’s like you say, Lou — the people participating here focus on other genres of the old time music, and almost all are instrumental only.

What do others think about Lew’s questions?

The Carters were great song collectors and better song condensers and composers, They wrote very few of the songs often attributed to them. Of songs that they did write, they were almost all songs they sang in the late 1930s or in the post WWII incarnations of the Carter family,'

However, they were superb masters of the entirely new genre of adapting songs, especially old-time songs to the new dictates of 78 records that could only hold a little less than 3 minutes of recording. They were quite successful editors of songs that were much longer than we know them today that often had 5 6 or 7 or 8 or even more verses.

There were many people who attempted to be recording artists in the period who failed at this. Instrumental pieces suffered the same fate, There is no way in the world that an old time fiddle dance tune could be useful even if you had a small dance of two couples to go through the progressions required for adequate dancing in 3 minutes. When recording companies first started recording old time music, or professional popular music for that matter, this was a problem,'

As someone who has a degree in writing fiction and poetry, you have to look at the decisions that the Carters made on every song that they recorded on how to hone the song down to meet the time restrictions,and at the same time have it punch,

One little sadness is that they never included banjo playing in any of their Victor Recordings whatsoever. Both Maybelle and Sarah played the five string banjo, but made no commercial recordings using the banjo. There is a clip of Maybelle playing the five-string banjo on one of the Smithsonian institution's web sites of a performance she put on in the 1960s or 70s. Somewhere in the archives of some California State folk site, there is also a brief home recording made in the 1950s or maybe 1960s of Sarah Carter playing the banjo while her husband think his name was Coy Bayles accompanies on the guitar.

I do not think Pleasant played the banjo, although he did play the guitar in a kind Parlor Guitar style that is similar to what is now called Classic Banjo. If you have the Border Radio 3 CD set of Carter recordings, he does a few songs in that playing the guitar in that style. Pleasant also played the fiddle, but I do not think there is any recordings of his fiddling.

I consider the current overconcentration on wordless fiddle tunes among old time revivalists and wannabe's a bad thing and it does not reflect what music that people made, or which musicians and singers were the most popular artists when old time music was current music.  This is particularly true for songs for the banjo and songs by banjoists where singing is primary.   I particularly detest that even banjo teachers teach primarily wordless instrumental versions of fiddle tunes that no one has ever heard a banjoist in the tradition play, while people stare at you in ignorance if you call extremely well known songs that the Carters, or Charlie Poole,or any number of artists performed and were popular.  That represents the physiogomy of current wannabe old time revivalists, but not the music,and certainly not he music as it was played when I started playing old time music in the 1960s,

Janet I really liked your 3/4 timing in your vocal portions. I hope you do some more.

The publicity image of the Carters was that they were a traditionalist conservative family living the old time life in the mountains of Virginia.  However, they were more like what modern families are like,  with divorce, separation, moving over to different parts of the country torn by love or jobs.

  In 1932  Pleasant Carter 's  cousin Coy Baylis flew into the Poor Valley in his own airplane and swept Sara off her feet.  Sara and Pleasant separated  by 1933.  Sara sued for divorce in September 1936,. She eventually moved to California to marry Baylis .     During some years the 1930s Pleasant left Virginia to work  industrial jobs in Detroit and other Northern cities.  They all continued to perform together on border Radio stations broadcasting from Mexico in the late 30s and continued to make records together until  1942 because they needed the bucks! (any people here remember KFAT?)  

  Very often by the mid 1930s,  the only times they were together was when they performed together on Border Radio stations in Mexico in the late 1930s, and when they were together in Victor recording studios.  They made hundreds of recordings because they really needed the money. 

In 1941 Peer had worked on Life magazine to do a full picture spread which was totally propaganda about the Carter Family of Poor Valley Virginia, all together in the mountains.  It never appeared because it was preempted  by Life's reporting on on Pearl Harbor.

 Sara Carter is often neglected in the view of contemporary old time musicians, but she was the glue and the connection that held them all together.  Ralph Peer said it was Sara's  voice on the Bristol sessions 1927 recording of "Single Girl" that made him want to record the Carters.  Peer who was not necessarily nice to many of the hillbilly and blues artists he recorded, really liked the Carters personally.   When they came to record in Victor's Camden NJ studios Peer often invited them to his house to meet his wife and family/.   I believe he visited them in Virginia once,

THERE IS NOT ENOUGH CARTER FAMILY MUSIC BEING SUNG BY OLD TIME MUSIC REVIVALISTS TODAY.

THERE IS NOT ENOUGH SINGING PERIOD BEING SUNG BY OLD TIME MUSIC revivalists TODAY.