Maybelle Carter  |
|
|---|---|
| Born | Maybelle Addington May 10, 1909 near Nickelsville, Virginia, USA |
| Died | October 23, 1978 (aged 69) Nashville, Tennessee, USA |
| Occupation | Musician |
"Mother Maybelle" Carter (May 10, 1909 - October 23, 1978) was an American country musician.
She was born Maybelle Addington on May 10, 1909 near Nickelsville, Virginia, the daughter of Hugh Jackson Addington and Margaret S. Kilgore. According to family lore, the Addington family of Virginia is descended from former British prime minister Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth.[1] three On March 13, 1926, Maybelle married Ezra J. Carter. They had three daughters, Helen, Valerie June (better known as June Carter Cash), and Anita.
She was a member of the original Carter Family, which was formed in 1927 by her brother-in-law, A. P. Carter, who was married to her cousin, Sara, also a part of the trio. It was perhaps the first commercial rural Country music group. Maybelle was the guitarist and also played autoharp and banjo; she created a unique sound for the group with her innovative 'scratch' style of guitar playing, also called Carter Family picking, where she used her thumb to play melody on the bass and middle strings, and her index finger to fill out the rhythm.
Perhaps the most remarkable of Maybelle's many talents was her skill as a guitarist. She revolutionized the instrument's role by developing a style in which she played melody lines on the bass strings with her thumb while rhythmically strumming with her fingers. Her innovative technique, to this day known as the Carter Scratch, influenced the guitar's shift from rhythm to lead instrument.—Holly George-Warren[2]
She was widely respected and loved by the Grand Ole Opry community of the early 1950s, and was popularly known as "Mother Maybelle." Maybelle and her daughters toured during the 1950s and 1960s as "Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters", frequently touring with Johnny Cash (her son-in-law from 1968 on); Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters were regular featured performers on Cash's weekly network variety show from 1969-71. Maybelle also briefly toured with former Carter Family member, Sara Carter, during the 1960s folk music craze. She was featured on The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's 1972 recording Will the Circle Be Unbroken.
Maybelle Carter died in 1978 after a few years of poor health, and was interred in Hendersonville Memory Gardens, Hendersonville, Tennessee.
In 1993, her image appeared on a U.S. postage stamp honoring the Carter Family. In 2001 she was initiated into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor. She would rank #8 in CMT's 40 Greatest Women of Country Music in 2002. In 2005, she was portrayed by Sandra Ellis Lafferty in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.
She was the subject of her granddaughter Carlene Carter's 1993 song "Me and the Wildwood Rose".
References
- ^ Cash, John Carter. Anchored in Love: An Intimate Portrait of June Carter Cash (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2007), 10.
- ^ George-Warren, Holly (1997). "Hillbilly Fillies: The Trailblazers of C&W" quoted in Reddington, Helen (2007). The Lost Women of Rock Music, p.179. ISBN 0754657736.
- Wolfe, Charles. (1998). "Carter Family". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 84–85.
- Zwonitzer, Mark with Charles Hirshberg. (2002). Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?: The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music. New York: Simon & Schuster.
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