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Mother Maybelle Carter lauded as a 'true trailblazer'

Published May 8th, 2009 | 1 Comments

Sunday marks what would have been the 100th birthday for a woman whose talents earned her the title of “the queen mother of country music.”

Born May 10, 1909, to parents Hugh and Margaret just outside Nickelsville, Maybelle Addington — better known to music fans as “Mother” Maybelle Carter — would go on to become one of the most important and influential guitar players in American music history.

A largely self-taught player who grew up in a musical family, Carter grabbed the attention of generations of country guitarists playing her trademark style — known as the “Carter scratch” — on her 1928 Gibson L-5 archtop acoustic guitar.

She first made her name with her brother-in-law A.P. Carter and cousin Sarah Carter as part of the Carter Family beginning in the late 1920s. After A.P. and Sara retired, Maybelle continued on in Nashville, this time with her daughters — June, Helen and Anita — as “Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters” until she died in 1978.

Maybelle was discovered in 1927 when the Carter Family, along with Jimmie Rodgers and dozens of other rural musicians, recorded for Ralph Peer and the Victor Talking Machine Co. at the now-famous Bristol Sessions.

As a result of the sessions, the group from Poor Valley would go on to record nearly 300 songs — like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” “Wildwood Flower” and “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy” — that would go on to be learned by amateur guitarists everywhere and recorded by hundreds of folk, bluegrass, country and even rock musicians throughout the years.

The band was a hit, not only for its singing and song selection, but also for Maybelle’s picking, which was different than anything else in country music at the time, said folk musician and folklorist Mike Seeger.

“In the 1920s in the rural South there were a lot of places where guitar was a new instrument,” said Seeger, who first got to know Maybelle in the 1960s and recorded a DVD called “Guitar Styles of the Carter Family” in 2000 with Janette Carter.

“She played her version of a style that was around a little bit where you played the melody in the bass strings and strum on the treble strings with your finger. She just focused in on that style for a while, and it’s the one she’s best known for.”

Carter’s approach to the guitar would lay the foundation for that instrument’s role in country music thanks to the popularity of the Carter Family and the sheer size of their musical catalog.

“Maybelle was really at the forefront of introducing the guitar as a melody as well as rhythm instrument,” Nashville vintage guitar expert George Gruhn said. “It became a lead instrument in country music, and she was a far better player than a lot of people realize. She was a true trailblazer. Up to that time there were plenty of good guitar players, but not in country music.”

“She was really doing the melody and doing it in a syncopated type style from what others were doing,” said Norman Blake, who played with Carter in the 1950s and later with Johnny Cash before striking out on his own. “I guess you would have to say she’s really one of the best early influences in real, old-fashioned mountain-style lead guitar. She was that. She was a real lead guitar player.”

Although the “Carter scratch” was her trademark style of picking, Seeger said it wasn’t all she could do.

“The combination of her strong, solid and driving, sometimes, musicianship, along with it being a new thing at the time, made her stand out,” Seeger said. “She played different styles too. She played with a flatpick sometimes, she played Hawaiian style, she played the alternating bass style she picked up from Lesley (Riddle), and that style is a reverse of the style she is most known for.”

“She was so keen on this. Just like Lesley said, ‘You don’t have to show Maybelle very much.’ She would watch you, listen and then she’d have it.”

Not as flashy as some of today’s country pickers, Carter’s approach to the six-string was far from simplistic, Blake said.

“To say that it’s simple is to say that you don’t hear the subtlety,” Blake said. “Not everything that’s complicated is a lick. How you play melody and how you phrase things and the timing of all of that is just as important as the licks you can run up and down the fingerboard.

“A lot of people can look at that style and say ‘Yeah, it’s not real complicated compared to today’s music.’ But they’ve got her to go on, and years and years of people doing the same thing as her,” Blake said. “She came up with it. That’s the point. It was original with her, and there wasn’t anybody that had really done that before, at least that I know of.

“There’s where the credit has to come in — when somebody originates something, like (Bill) Monroe and the mandolin. There’s a lot of Monroe mandolin players today, but where would any of us be if Bill hadn’t thought up whatever it was he was doing?”

That subtlety is what draws many musicians, even the most accomplished, to her playing, said Jerry Hensley, a relative or Carter’s who played with Johnny Cash and later the Statler Brothers.

“She played better than her contemporaries, and there are some of her rolls and licks that I still use today,” Hensley said of his great-aunt. “They’re just as viable today as they ever were. Almost everyone you can mention has been influenced by her, but one of the main ones that comes to mind is Chet Atkins. You can hear Maybelle’s style in Chet’s playing.”

A “down-to-earth” person, Blake said Carter never allowed her success or ability go to her head.

“She was one of those people I think that thought she knew she didn’t have anything to prove because she knew the music she knew. If you’re into the music as much as you are the other side of it, then you don’t have to prove anything. You just do it,” Blake said.

She was able to stay grounded, Hensley said, because she never forgot her roots in Poor Valley.

“She was just as sweet as she could be, just a typical Southwest Virginia lady, just a real sweetheart,” Hensley said. “Like any of those people that do that kind of thing, she just said ‘aw shucks’ to everything. Like that old Carter scratch ain’t nothing, but it really was something, and it still is.”

Carter will be honored today with a special concert at the Carter Family Fold. The event kicks off at 3:30 p.m., and headliners Karl Shiflett and Big Country take the stage at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $15 for adults and $1 for children ages 6-11. Youngsters under 6 get in free.

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I was just going to put out there that videos and clips from the carter fold are available at http://carterfoldshow.com/ Pretty neat, I think they go back a couple years, not sure if yesterday's big thing is up there yet! She was such a blessing to the world in so many ways.

chad riggs | 5/11/2009 - 10:14 AM - ( Comment

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