Janette Carter (July 2, 1923 – January 22, 2006), was the last surviving member of country's immortal Carter Family, championing the cause of traditional American roots music into the 21st century.
Janette Carter was born in Maces Springs, Virgina and was the youngest daughter of A.P. and Sara Carter Jeanette learned autoharp from her mother and at age twelve began appearing with the Family who signed with RCA Victor producer/talent scout Ralph Peer in 1927. Over the course of classics like "Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow," "Keep on the Sunny Side," and "No Depression," the Carters introduced the pure, poignant harmonies and intricate melodies that would define country & western for decades to follow, establishing the trio as the most influential group in roots music history.
Three Carter recording sessions took place in Charlotte. The first two were arranged by RCA Victor in May of 1931; the final session was undertaken in June of 1938 for Decca Records. Twenty-nine sides were recorded in all.Despite their commercial success A.P. and Sara Carter divorced in 1932. Seven years later, Sara married A.P.'s cousin Coy Bayes and relocated to California, taking her children with her. The year 1938 proved to be especially successful for the Carters.
They were hired by Consolidated Drug Trade Products—the Chicago-based maker of Peruna tonic, Kolorbak hair dye, and Radio Girl perfume—and sent to Texas where they broadcast daily over high-wattage border radio stations just inside Mexico. The border stations reached much of North America and introduced the Carters to hundreds of thousands of new fans. By the late 1930s Jeanette and her bother Joe were regularly adding their voices to the Carter Family broadcasts on border radio and over WBT. Along the way she helped her father gather traditional tunes from rural singers. A. P. would write down the words and Janette would commit the tunes to memory. “She was my tape recorder,” A. P. is quoted as saying proudly.
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| A.P. & Sara Carter with Janette and Joe |
When not broadcasting on border radio, Consolidated Drug brought the Carter Family back to powerful 50,000-watt WBT in Charlotte. A Charlotte Observer radio listing for June 1939 indicates that the Carters were then broadcasting a “farm time” show with announcer Grady Cole each weekday morning, and a second half-hour program every afternoon. This schedule seems to have continued into early 1940 when the family returned to Texas for more broadcasts and transcriptions. Historians report that the family returned to Charlotte in late 1941 or early 1942 for a final six months of work for WBT. It was then that the Carter Family concluded its recording career, but in 1952 both A.P. and Sara agreed to a comeback, enlisting Janette and her brother Joe before signing to the Acme label to record some 100 songs over the next four years.
Following her father's 1960 death, Janette, who was at the time an elementary school cook, dedicated her life to preserving their music and legacy, hosting informal music programs at A.P.'s Poor Valley, Virgina, retail store. Although she never earned the commercial or critical acclaim awarded her sister June Carter Cash, Janette also mounted a solo career, in 1972 releasing her debut LP, Storms Are on the Ocean, on the tiny Birch label. Howdayadoo followed on Traditional Records a year later.
In 1976 she established the Hiltons, VA-based Carter Family Fold, a nonprofit amphitheater and museum site built from old railroad ties and school bus seats dedicated to the old-time music of rural Appalachia. Despite the Fold's strict adherence to traditional acoustic music, Janette eventually eased her restrictions in order to allow her brother-in-law Johnny Cash to play an electric set.
She directed the centre and served as master of ceremonies and performer at the Saturday night shows, often accompanied by her brother Joe. She toured in the United States and abroad, appeared on radio and TV and was recognized as a living musical treasure. But by all accounts she remained an unaffected country woman who called everybody, including former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, “honey.”
Carter told a Washington Post reporter in 1989 that a visitor to the center had once asked her what she was striving for. “That’s when it hit me,” she said. “I’m not striving for anything. I’ve reached it.” Carter continued hosting weekly concerts at the Fold into her eighties, and in 2004 the Bear Family label assembled Deliverance Will Come, compiling the entirety of her slim solo output. For a long time she battled Parkinson's disease and other illnesses, then after a fall she was taken to the Holston Valley Medical Center, Kingsport, Tennessee, where she died on January 22, 2006 at the age of 82 years.
She was 82 years old. She was buried next to her mother, Sara Carter Bayes, and her brother, Joe, at the Mount Vernon United Methodist Church Cemetery in Maces Spring.
Carter is a recipient of a 2005 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States' highest honour in the folk and traditional arts, in recognition for her lifelong advocacy for the performance and preservation of Appalachian music.
(Edited from AllMusic, Wikipedia, History South & Masters of Traditional Arts)
