Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?: The Carter Family and Its Legacy in American Music

This book, along with Jimmy McDonough's biography of Neil Young "Shakey," is one of the best written books about popular music that I've ever read. The breadth of the research is staggering, and the prose is a curious mix of cussing and twenty-dollar words that relays the events surrounding the ascention of the Carter Family with the immediacy their massive cultural and artistic impact deserves. Zwonitzer not only provides succinct yet detailed descriptions of the Carters' everyday lives, he also lays out a vivid portrait of the full context into which the Carter Family fits. It's a fairly quick read, with tremendous amounts of information crammed into every sentence. As with the best Carter Family recordings, not a breath here is wasted, and every note hits the stomach like a punch.

There is not a dull page in this 397 page account of The Carter Family. The writers manage to strike a happy medium between a scholarly treatise and a popular biography, something I find very appealing. In addition to being a biography of the Carters, the book also is a history of country music in the first half of the Twentieth Century roughly and a statement on rural Southern sociology of the time as well. The book is full of information that I suspect is told for the first time as well as trivia many of us knew but had forgotten: For example, there was a time when soft drinks were called "dopes" in East Tennessee. I had forgotten that and that my aunt wore Blue Waltz perfume. (There is a funny account of Maybelle's breaking a bottle of this dreadful perfume she was using as a slide for her guitar in a recording session.) I laughed out loud to learn that Helen Carter, who could learn to play any instrument almost immediately, was having trouble with her first accordian. It took Pee Wee King's telling her she was playing the instrument upside down to get her on the right track. The Original Carter Family was the first group to let the women lead as opposed to being backup singers. The less than admirable Ralph Peer of the recording industry coined the term "hillbilly" for the kind of music Carters and other country Southerners played in the early part of the 20th Century. There is a good account of A. P.'s collecting mountain songs all over the South. That contribution alone would make him a giant in folk/country music. Finally we learn a great deal about both generations of this great family, from A. P., Sarah and Maybelle to "Mama" Maybelle and her daughters. I was pleased to learn, for example, that Maybelle was as good and kind a person as she always seemed to be. (She even sat with sick people for part-time employment at one point in her later life when country music was in an eclipse.) There is a poignant contrast between what apparently was the long and happy marriage of Maybelle and A. P. Carter's brother Eck and A. P. and Sarah's marriage that ended in divorce. Certainly there is nothing more heart wrenching than Sarah's dedicating a song over the radio (apparently in the presence of A. P.) to the man she married after her divorce. The song was "I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes." Coy Bays, the intended recipient, heard the song all the way in California and came to Texas for his woman. In the many years that A. P. lived alone thereafter, he never stopped loving Sara. She was preceded in death by him. Both of them are buried, however, only two rows from each other (even though Sara died in California and had been divorced from A. P. for many years) in Mount Vernon Cemetery in Maces Springs, Virginia with identical tombstones. Above their names and dates in beautiful pink marble are perfectly round 78 records and the words "Keep on the Sunny Side."This is a really fine book. Even folks not interested much in this sort of music should

"Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone" is not only an exceptional history of the Carter family but also a fine history of rural America in the 20's, 30's and 40's. From the mountains of Virginia, the powerful radio stations in Mexico across the river from Texas, the great depression, and life in the 60's and 70's. If you have the slightest interest in country music this book should be on your must read list. You will not only read a great history of the Carter family but find stories of Johnny Cash, Chet Atkins, Tom T.Hall, Hank Williams and others. I have read this book three times thus far and each time I find it hard to lay the book down.

Seamless tracing out of these people out of the hills of Virginia who till the end, didn't see themselves as any different from the rest, other than they liked to play and sing music, and people liked to listen.For one such as I who never knew much about those behind the likes of June and Johnny, this was revealing. Strong characters of A.P. and Sarah and Eck and Maybelle, et al, form the nucleus of this formidiable foundational country/folk.The ties with the likes of Atkins and Hank Williams and Elvis and Nitty Gritty, etc. are documented in such a unasuming and relaxed way that it seems as though you're there in their warm hospitality which they showed to all who came to Clinch Mountain.The reader will surely take away fond stories, such as: Maybelle's panic to find instrument for June to play as approach Texas radio gig, writing chord changes on autoharp, June recalling Mom's admonition "You will learn to play the autoharp this week;" or Cowboy Slim borrowing Maybelle's guitar, only to lose it in a poker game; to dreaded Al Gore Sr.'s singing.Appreciated spiritualness of the Carter's. Interesting point Zwonitzer makes on page 311: "Sam Phillip's boys--Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash--were raised on gospel and country music. .... But their hit songs were the yearnings of the flesh. In fact, by the mid-fifties, everybody seemed to be sings about the scratching the big itch, and Maybelle's more indirect and innocent songs of woodland cottages and myrtle, dewy roses and heavenly light, were starting to feel a little dusty."Author is real wordsmith. Reading this book is like putting on that ole pair of bluejeans that feels so good and comfortable. Fine example of written documentary of seminal musical group to this country's rich musical lore.