Memories Of The Country Music Highway Part 2

 

Guest post by Priscilla King

Our tradition did not filter out songs about mourning, or worship, or other things, for that obsessive focus on Teen Romance that commercial advertising brought in.

A.P. Carter, who seldom really sang (he said "I just bass in now and then") but was posed standing behind Sara and Maybelle as if he did, had died before I was born. I heard a few of Sara's and Maybelle's retrospective performances on radio, though. They died a few months apart in the winter of 1979-80. For what seemed like the rest of the Reagan Administration local radio stations played their songs daily; especially "Wildwood Flower." I used to wisecrack about trying to get through a day without hearing either a recording or a rendition of "Wildwood Flower," but of course John McCutcheon called it "Scott County's national anthem" and of course I like it--how not! (See below.)

Jimmie Rodgers

The Carters met "The Singing Brakeman" in Bristol. He already knew he had tuberculosis; he exposed them, their recording crew, and their agents to the disease. Rodgers was born in Mississippi, but had been performing with a band in Virginia when he and the  Carters recorded the historic "Bristol Sessions." He didn't stay in Virginia long...but it was where he became famous. 

Notice: Traditional songs did not shy away from either narrating sensational violent crimes, or expressing violent fantasies. I'm not sure that this aspect of traditional songs needs to be emphasized, but I don't think it should be painted over, either. Pete Seeger's astringent remarks on this subject can hardly be improved on here; they can be roundly seconded, and they are.

The Carter Sisters

After Sara and A.P. Carter divorced and Sara was living with her second husband. Maybelle Carter, her three daughters, and sometimes their friends, performed as the Carter Sisters (and their Mother Maybelle). Their version of "Wildwood Flower," as preserved on YouTube, is not the one I grew up singing along with but it does offer a fine illustration of the Carter "lick" or "scratch." 

Their 1950s girl-band sound showed more commercial influences. No more gritty prewar reality; they sang about Teen Romance with an occasional, usually single-release, gospel song, like "Lonesome Valley" (here recorded as a retrospective, featuring daughter Carlene Smith Carter).

None of the young men who performed with the band was originally a local fellow, but marriage gave them local connections. June Carter, of course, married Johnny Cash. Helen, sometimes considered the pretty one, and Anita, often said to have the best voice, also recorded on their own after the girl-band sound went out of style.

Carl Smith

By the time I came along, Carl Smith was remembered somewhat scornfully as the man June Carter dumped, but he was still selling records on his own. Here are two songs of his that were still being played on the radio, not always on Jimmy Smith's show, either, during my early life.

Jimmy Smith

"The Old Ridgerunner" wisecracked about being Carl Smith's brother. His official biographies say they were not noticeably related. They were friends; their voices and musical choices were similar, and performing with Carl while he was married to June Carter led Jimmy Smith to settle in Gate City. He hosted the morning radio show on WGAT AM (Radio Gate City) for several years, then moved to WDUF AM (Radio Duffield), fifteen miles up the road, in the 1990s. He recorded some songs, and played some of them on his radio show, but none of them seems to be available as a free video online now. I don't recall ever hearing that he retired. My impression is that he was on WDUF up to his final illness in 2002.

A Ridgerunner is a person from North Carolina and proud of it. Online sources say Smith was born in Tennessee. ???

Johnny Cash

My parents' generation didn't approve of his image, his rockabilly style, or his and June Carter's having divorced other people to marry each other. My generation generally forgave them since they were so obviously Partners For Life. Johnny Cash never lived in Gate City but he had friends and fans here. He had friends and fans everywhere.

Chet Atkins

He came from the other side of Clinch Mountain, in Tennessee. He performed with the Carter Sisters, with Jim Reeves, and with just about everybody who was anybody in all genres of popular music in the mid-twentieth century.

Patsy Cline

She grew up in the Swamp not the Point, but she was a Hensley. A relative. I think my parents would have liked her for that reason even if she hadn't been considered one of the best singers in the pop and country genres.

Many people I've met think there's something disreputable, even immoral, about walking outdoors at night. I suspect they just don't have good night vision. I've always liked walking at night.

Beachard Smith

Toward the end of his life, winter of 1979-80, this strictly local fiddler exchanged some mutual promotional benefit from his friendship with John McCutcheon. He played at local events all his life but was only really featured, or recorded, during the last few years. His "Home Folks" have the authentic traditional sound, not influenced by Nashville. I listened to a fair bit of this on the Old Ridgerunner Show, growing up. I should mention, though, that some of my elders belonged to a church that frowned on this sort of dance tunes.

You can see the road from Hiltons to Gate City at the beginning of this dance video. The dancing is definitely part of a local tradition that flared up into a fad in the 1970s. Clog dancing originated in Ireland and was popular in the Victorian era because it's not sensual. As much as possible the dancers move only their feet, looking at the audience not at each other. It's all about precise, rhythmic footwork. The more feet beat in the same rhythm, the better the dancing is considered to be. In the 1970s the Rye Cove Cloggers were rated very good; they performed on the Grand Ole Opry and elsewhere. Some students at my school were excused from classes to rehearse and perform with the Cloggers. The group later broke up. Anyway, you see would-be Cloggers, and their parents and their baby sisters, in the video.

Fair warning: this link replays a whole LP, and McCutcheon's label, June Appal, was known for packing more minutes of music than most labels put on their LPs.

Loretta Lynn

Feelings about her were mixed in my town. To some people "Coal Miner's Daughter" was a term of contempt and was all they ever noticed about this Kentucky singer. Loretta Lynn's well publicized story and stage image, marrying at an age that wouldn't even have been legal anywhere but Kentucky, worse yet claiming not to be able to read (even if she meant "in this light"), seemed trashy and demeaning to all mountain people in the 1960s and 1970s. She was not someone I was encouraged to take as a role model in any way. But her mother was a Ramey, so she had distant relatives in my town. Some people wouldn't listen to her records or watch the movie about her early life. "Coal camp trash" was a phrase I heard. Some people thought she was great. Even when she died, a few years ago, the comments people posted on a social media page about her showed that ambivalence.

Let's just say this. The Carters had the image of ladies and gentlemen, but Loretta Lynn did stay with one husband until death did them part.

She was known for singing about issues of real concern to mountain women, and in her autobiography she mentions this song as one that had special resonance for her. The Rameys are, of course, part Cherokee though questions have been raised whether the name was originally "Rainy" or was imported from France, Scotland, or Ireland. (Answer: nobody knows. They lost the records.) The most common pattern of genetic alcoholism is, of course, estimated to affect about three-quarters of all Irish people and three-quarters of all Cherokee people in the same way, raising some question about how many of these people's ancestors made contact before Columbus's time But the song always made me think of a neighbor family whose name came from the English Border country and who look about as White as White gets, all with ash-fair hair and blue eyes. They had the same type of alcoholic gene and a long history of letting it get the best of them.

_____________________________________________________

Most likely, the next section will appear next Monday!!

🎻

Owls and Crows and Boogers, Oh My!

 A Sunday rumination by some of our friends, the cats.

            “Toots, Sweetie,” said Suzy one night, “What is it that we Cautious™ cats need most of all?”
            “You might ask yourself that question,” said Toots thoughtfully. “But if you ask me, after food, love, and shelter, we need comforting.”
            “And why do you think that is,” inquired Suzy.
            “To be frank, (shut up Willie) with great learning and awareness comes anxiety, that niggling unease. Possibilities suggest themselves during the dark hours, the goblin hours, when fears rise up and taunt a girl.
            “The academic knowledge that the greatest number of possibilities never materialize doesn’t seem to take away from their power to trouble. These things are like a wicked faery who just won’t shut up!”
            “So, what is the remedy, my dear?” said Suzy.
            “In the long run, it’s trust,” said Toots.
            “And why is that?” said Suzy.
            “Because you must be able to trust him, or her, who is your comforter. They must be able to address your misgivings and anxieties in a believable way!” retorted Toots, a little passionately.
            “Can you suggest an example,” said Suzy.
            “Let’s see. Well, the latest thing was those migrating Hairy People down at the creek making all that noise and trying to kid everybody by faking bird noises. I was afraid for a while. Now, my Gentleman, is a great comfort. I know I can trust him when he says that no traveling Booger parade is going to come into the house and shop and pull our ears and tails off of us.”
            “I think that’s right, Toots,” said Suzy. “I experience a similar reassurance, when I hear some shockingly sinister noise in or around the house and she tells me that it’s alright. If she says it’s alright, then I have to accept that and sit back down and breath easily,” said Suzy. “Trust is our part of the bargain and also being careful about who we trust.”
            Willie had actually been awake and listening to the girls.
            “I think you, Suzy, and Toots, need to realize that you’re not in charge of much!” he said, laughing a little.
            “Don’t be so solemn and fat headed! Let it be! Be thankful and Purr™ all the time. It’s really about all you can do!” he said.
            “Trust me!” laughed Willie.
            Both girls turned their tails toward him, but secretly, they were comforted.

Part 4. An Additional Snapshot

 

            It doesn’t take long to drive 30 miles up a lonely two lane blacktop road.
            Howard, the Cat, had said Bertie was in Luminous. Russell Ohlmstead, the local sheriff, had nothing else to go on, so he went with that.
            Howard was riding along and they were on their way to Luminous, Texas. The afternoon was sliding on toward early evening. It was still warm and bright out, but the angle of the light was different now. Interviewing the people out on the ranches and looking around a bit had taken several hours.
            “You think you’re sure, huh?” said Russell.
            “The closer we get to her, the better I will know it,” said Howard, rather inscrutably.
            “I hope I’m not crazy. I also hope I never have to explain this to anyone,” said Russell.
            “I’m hungry, Russell. She hadn’t fed me. I was still asleep,” added Howard. “Not to mention thirsty.”
            “Well, Howard, I’m hungry too, but I think we better stay on the trail. I’ll stop and get you something at the little store at the end of town, if they’re still open.”
            Russell got there before closing at 8PM. He purchased a small bag of Friskies, fish flavor, a bottle of water and two plastic bowls. Russell had never had a cat. He had no idea what a cat might prefer.
            “It was the only cat food they had in there, Howard. I hope you don’t mind, but this is an emergency,” said Russell. But he took the time to feed the kitty. While they were parked outside the little store, which was now closing, Russell opened the Friskies, and the water bottle and decanted some each into a bowl for Howard to eat and drink down on the floorboard of the Ford SUV.
            Russell drank some of the water too.
            “Thank you. I hate fish. But it doesn’t matter,” said Howard. “She’s not right in town here, but not too far away.”
            “Where now?” said Russell.
            Howard hopped back up on the passenger seat and looked out at the darkening sky. He nodded toward the north. “She’s moving. I don’t understand. But she’s moving fast and she’s up that way, back on the highway.”
            The sheriff knew about the soft rolling hills with the moving colored lights, but he hadn’t actually gotten to see them after dark before. It just hadn't happened. It did this evening. The whole experience since this morning had only gotten stranger and stranger. Now he was driving past the mysterious colorful display that the town of Luminous was named for, trusting a telepathic tabby cat’s psychic connection to his human keeper, sweet Bertie.
            He drove slowly, giving Howard a chance to stay on the trail. Also he wanted to admire the mysterious lights.
            “Here. Wait here. She’s coming somehow, right here…” Howard stood with his fore paws on the dash looking out into the darkness toward a sprawling house and outbuildings across the small highway from where they were parked and waiting.

🚐

Friday, September 12, 2025 Open Thread & Frolics

Greetings Gentle People! 

I did not write a thing Thursday. Instead I had company!
Which is all very fine, and agreeable.
However, it does cut into Storytime.

Instead, I offer a couple of shots of a youthful gull

beseeching its mother for food.

Shot Thursday on a Pacific Ocean Beach.

By Bubble Woman, herself.

🤍

Part 3. A Snapshot.

 

Awareness stole in slowly.

Probably the soreness of her feet began the process of coming back to herself. She was barefoot. She found herself walking on a the soft rolling mound in a desert landscape. It didn’t look familiar, but then would it have looked familiar if this had been like any other day?

She didn’t know why she kept taking steps. It seemed like she must have been going somewhere, if she could just remember where.

“I am,” she thought, and then stopped. No name sprang instantly to mind.

There were lights around her. Maybe the lights had something to do with why she found herself here on this remote patch of desert.

Night had fallen, and it was getting chilly. She looked down at herself. She was wearing jeans, and a dark colored t-shirt. She ran her fingers through her hair. She usually wore it pinned up with one of those big claw things, but it was missing and her shoulder length dark hair fell in tangled locks. It kept her neck and shoulders warm, she thought.

She stopped walking, to spare her feet. “Bertie,” she said. “Who is Bertie?”

Some of the lights were amber colored. Amorphous. Having no particular locus of emanation. They made her think of summer warmth. She smiled there in the dark.

Some were blue like clear evening skies. Deeply blue. There was also lavender, and a deep pink. She enjoyed them very much. She watched them drifting like jelly fishes almost. Aimless, apparently.

She thought she had better start walking again. Surely. But her feet were really sore, now that she was noticing them.

“Not a good place for you,” came to her mind.

“Is someone here?” Bertie asked. She couldn’t see anyone there in the dark with the pretty colored lights moving all around her.

“Yes, lady, I am here,” but the word for lady was a bit smudged in her mind, as if the speaker thought in some other tongue.

“But, who are you?” she asked again.

“Hewhowards,” the words seemed to say. She laughed because she didn’t know the word. Ward.

“I will take you to a safe place for you,” he said, “If you will allow it.”

“May I see you?” she said.

“Yes.”

He seemed like a very large man. A giant surely, barely visible there in the colorful semi-dark.

“I don’t know where I am,” she said after looking him over for a minute or so.

“I know,” he said aloud, in a soft deep voice.

He bent over so that she could reach his neck, and said, “wrap your left arm around my neck and I will carry you in my right arm.”

So she did, and he picked her up like a little child and began walking away from the hillside of the colored lights.

She trusted him absolutely.

🌵🌖🌵

Somewhere Near Luminous Texas, Part 2

 

When I found Howard sitting outside, like he was, I knew I wasn’t going to like this, whatever it was. In addition, I got a cold nasty feeling in my stomach when I saw that the door was about an inch ajar.

Howard didn’t budge. He kept looking at me, like he had something to say. His bright green eyes looked deeply into mine. I kind of shook my head to maybe break the spell.

“I sure wish you’d spit it out, Howard,” I said, as I climbed the three steps and opened the door. I didn’t even say “Geronimo!” I just opened the door and stepped in. Howard followed me inside. Oh, how I wanted to see Bertie in there making coffee or ordering groceries or anything, but she wasn’t there.

I had never been upstairs to Bertie’s apartment, but I followed Howard up there as soon as I saw that she wasn’t in the store. It almost seemed to me that Howard wanted to show me that she wasn’t upstairs either.

The apartment was neat, spare even. Bertie didn’t go in for a lot of stuff lying around. If I had taken time to admire it, I would have noticed her very good taste. Everything seemed to be in place. There was no sign of trouble up there. Whatever had happened to her didn’t happen in her rooms upstairs.

Howard headed downstairs and I followed his tail down the tight little old fashioned staircase. It occurred to me to check the drawer for Mulvaney’s Colt. It was there. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, or if it was just data.

I don’t know how he did it, Howard’s pretty heavy, but he managed to get onto the counter and sat there staring at me, pointedly. Once again, the big tabby looked like he wanted to say something.

“She’s in Luminous.”

“I don’t have time to lose my mind, Howard,” I said, partly to steady myself. I wasn’t ready for a telepathic tomcat. “How would you know that, anyhow?”

“Russell.” The beast knew my name? “She’s in Luminous.”

“I can’t very well call for search and rescue on the word of a cat, Howard,” I said, but I was thinking it too!

“I always know where she is,” came back at me. I had a strange wobbly feeling. Maybe I was losing it? I stared into the small mirror on the wall in there to see if I looked crazy, while I was thinking. No crazier than usual. Just me, a fiftyish guy in a tan uniform.

“How and why, Howard? How and why?” I frowned at the big fuzzball on Bertie’s counter.

“I was asleep. Then she was gone. The door was open, and she was gone,” he said.

I took an analytical look around the inside of the store. Everything looked normal in here too. I took the Colt, and found her extra key in the drawer, right where she said it would be.

I stepped outside, with Howard at my heels, and locked the door. I couldn’t very well leave him there alone could I? Besides, he said he was coming with me.

How do you like that?

I opened the passenger side door, to let Howard in, closed it and walked around to my side. Before I got in I looked at the little old Apache John store sitting there not telling me anything. It looked utterly normal. Just a little old fashioned brick two story building sitting alone on the highway, the highway leading to Luminous, Texas.

Maybe a bit like this real one!

But before driving to Luminous, I owed it to Bertie to search the area, no matter what Howard thought he knew. Besides open land, there were exactly two places I needed to visit. Both were ranches. One, the Mitchell place was five miles down a dirt road called Swallow for some reason. The other, Johnson’s, was at the other end of Swallow, eastward.

I didn’t think they would know anything at either place. But, me and Howard drove out to Mitchell’s first anyhow. What it usually amounts to in a case like this is to inform the homeowner of the situation and ask them to call if they see anything.

I talked to Mrs. Mitchell on her big wide old fashioned porch, deeply shady and pleasant. On some other day, I thought it might be nice to visit here. Mrs. Aline Mitchell was a serious looking blond in her forties, who listened nodded and said she sure would keep her eyes open and that she really liked Bertie, the store lady. I gave her a card with my mobile number on it, in case she noticed anything.

A similar scenario happened at the Johnson’s place. I talked to a hired lady, who did the cooking and some housekeeping in the big stone building. She took my card and said she would inform the Johnsons when they got home. Her name was Louisa.

At neither house did I admit I had Bertie’s tomcat in my vehicle.

I drove westward on Swallow until we reached that little desert highway, and then turned north.

🌵

Linkie to first part.

Somewhere Near Luminous Texas

 

What do you call a place that's almost no place at all? Unincorporated? Sure. A little old store, also the mail station, and the gas pump. Yup. Not much to it.

Let me set this up for you. This little place, almost no place, is situated about 25 miles south of Luminous, TX, out in the county. Now, Luminous isn’t much either, but it’s more than this place. In Luminous there is a school, all grades in one building, a Charismatic church, two grocery stores, a motel, a gas station, a drug store, and a nice little café. Here, there is the desert scrub, a two lane asphalt road crumbling at the edges and this little store, open every day until 8PM. After that you'd have to drive a lot further to get anything.

I call this place Geronimo sometimes, to irritate the love of my life who runs the store and the mail station. She says there are five towns in America named Geronimo and this ain’t one of them. This place is called Apache John. Now, what kind of sense does that make? Does anybody even know why? Who was Apache John, anyhow?

Of course, she doesn’t know she’s the love of my life, and her name is Bertie, short for Alberta Mulvaney. I’ve been irritating her and keeping an eye on things, unofficially, for about five years.

I’m the law. County. I drive a white Ford Explorer with stars on the doors.

Why doesn’t she know? It’s a good question and maybe I’m not as brave as I look. What if she laughed? What if she got that look on her face a woman gets sometimes and you can tell she thinks you’re not quite as smart or good looking as her dog.

So, every morning at about 9AM, right after the Apache John store and gas pump opens I drive up and park right in front of the door. I take a good hard look around, just making sure. Then I get out of my Ford, go over and open the door, saying “Geronimo!” in greeting. Bertie will be sorting some mail, or whatever she does. She makes coffee, I know that, because she fills my cup every morning.

“Hi, Officer,” she’ll say. “Coast still clear out there? Everything good?” She’ll smile a little, with something in her hands, as she goes about her business in that little kingdom in the desert. She knows I drive by three or four times a day. Anybody might do that.

“Thanks, Russell,” she usually says when I take my coffee outside.

I stand on the little concrete porch and take in the scenery. The coffee steams. The day begins and I have to roll out of there. There is an office to check in at.

If you count the inhabitants of a couple of far flung ranches, the population of Apache John, nearly no place at all is about 9, including Bertie’s tom cat. Howard, the cat, is an over-sized fat headed tabby. He regards me with disdain.

The Apache John Grocery’s customer base is mostly tourists, travelers, delivery drivers, people on the road as a way of life. The ranchers shop there too. There was reason enough to keep an eye on the place.

Bertie isn’t completely defenseless. She’s a widow and she keeps her husband’s big Colt in a drawer behind the counter. She and Howard the cat live in a little four room apartment over the store.

On the day in question, a Tuesday morning, not that it matters, I drove up to the Apache John store, as usual, but I found Howard sitting on the steps. Howard is not an outdoor cat.

This wasn’t right.

🌵

Memories From The Country Music Highway

Guest post by reader Priscilla King*

This is the main street in my home town, Gate City, Virginia. This is all of it--or all of what's considered the "downtown" part of it, anyway. Both east and west of the section shown here, Jackson Street continues on as Route 58, lined with houses and a few businesses. 

Photo from Wikipedia.

This is the other street, Kane Street.

Photo from a tourist's video that is not especially well informed, but does show most of the old buildings and present-time shops downtown: 

Kane and Jackson Streets intersect at an oblique angle; the narrow side of the angle includes a few side streets on which the schools are situated. The wide side includes one back street that in 1983 was deemed neglected enough that, with a little effort to make it look more dilapidated, could be used for the bank scene--"Downtown Mill Rock"--in the movie The River; it runs as far as the old railroad depot, now the headquarters of the Life Saving Crew. The main streets follow Daniel Boone's Trail to the Moccasin Gap. 

The war on indigenous Americans, the Civil War, and labor unions' "wars" with employers most definitely reached Gate City but they're not the parts of our history people enjoy reenacting. Our favorite parts of our history skip from the "pioneers" who came after Daniel Boone and stayed long enough to contribute something to the building of a town, straight into the twentieth century when the Original Carter Family basically created the genre of "country" music.

A section of Route 23 near my home was officially identified as the Country Music Highway around the turn of the century. Gate City, Virginia, does not actually have a strong claim to be called the home or birthplace of country music, being about ten miles away from the settlement the Carters called home, but in the late twentieth century it certainly had a rich and vibrant tradition of folk/country music. It would be a shame if the tradition lasted through only two generations' lifetimes.

The Roberts family who ran the Family Bakery Cafe where I used to maintain this web site, pre-COVID, worked very hard to encourage present-time musicians...

Photo from Virginia.org, showing one of the Friday and Saturday evening street concerts during which the whole of downtown Jackson Street was used for open-air concerts. I suppose the contemporary bands who performed there--all local--thought the bands whose names I remember sounded "oldfashioned." To me they sounded "all alike, the sort of generic rockabilly sound of which Nashville is already full." Local youth still sing but I've heard very little of our sound...but maybe I just didn't go into town to hear enough, I don't know. The Appalachian Dream Spinners did seem to be preserving our sound, on their three albums, but then I've not heard anything about them since about 2010.

Unfortunately only some of our memorable musicians have posted any digital recordings online, and the one who currently owns the domain of FolkMusic.com is willing to share only an old, bad digital recording free of charge. Nevertheless. Musicians with some claim to be "local" do include some of the best known names in the "country" and "Southern Gospel" music genres.

Of the thirty names that leaped to mind, not all were ever actually based in Gate City. Most, in fact, were based in nearby towns. The Original Carter Family thought of themselves as residents of a settlement called Maces Springs. If people feel that Maces Springs was too small to count as a town, they might have called it a suburb of Hiltons, which had its own post office and was legally counted as a town. The Carter Fold is in what might be called downtown Hiltons, but it was where the Family worked, not their original home. Gate City was the county seat where they transacted official business, and one of the neighboring towns where A.P. Carter collected songs before his wife and sister-in-law started singing them. Bristol was where they recorded their first  few songs. Later they moved west; in her memoir June Carter Cash said they moved to get away from the plague of tuberculosis, a later biographer thought the "real" motive may have been to distract attention from Sara Carter's divorce, both reasons would have been strong motivating factors. But Gate City loved them. (Gate City may, in fact, have been the source of some of A.P. Carter's songs.)

I'm probably leaving out some people who deserve to be listed. "Everybody's made a tape these days," lamented the same person who commissioned and marketed my retrospective album, "Fun to Play the Old Time Songs." Just about everybody had, too. Some of those homemade cassette albums were, like mine, souvenirs for people's friends and family, and some were actually played on the radio and recognized by people who didn't know the musicians personally. The thirty band names listed here all sold albums to people who did not know the musicians personally.

The Original Carter Family

They really were the First Family of Country Music. There's a channel dedicated to their music on Youtube and an article about their history on Wikipedia. Although their home base was about ten miles away from Gate City, the high school was consolidated in 1956, so I went to school with Carter, Dougherty, and Bays cousins. 

Among Maybelle Carter's contributions to musical history was enshrining the autoharp, a fad instrument of her day, as a traditional part of our "country" music--as distinct from Nashville's. "The Nashville Sound," as played 24/7 on some radio station somewhere on every part of the continent, is a product of unionized musicians who were more interested in secure jobs than in exploring or perfecting the art of music. It sticks to three or at most four chords, a steady duple rhythm, with an emphasis on lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and bass guitar. The Carters themselves were not bound by those limitations. Their sound did reflect the fact that they were young, not rich, and pretty much self-taught musicians, but they were also creative and apt to experiment. So: autoharp. So: sometimes a 3/4 rhythm, sometimes even a "diverse" musical influence--everyone recognizes the Mexican sound in "You Are My Flower." 

I was not a particularly talented child. Special talent was not considered necessary by music teachers, or art teachers either, in elementary schools up to about 1970, or older ones after that time. Most children aren't born singing on key or drawing recognizable images. So,  teachers have to teach them. Apparently I sang some songs, even as a toddler, recognizably enough that my parents were delighted and started recording and  coaching me; I remember that the whole idea of singing on key started to make sense to me in grade four, but I'd been taped (mercifully the tapes don't seem to have survived) before starting school. In grade four I was able to bang out tunes on a keyboard. Also in that year Prevention magazine mentioned that playing a wind instrument could help straighten kids' teeth and improve their lung capacity. My teeth, which had been pronounced hopeless by orthodontists, certainly needed all the help they could get and my lung capacity could use some help too, so my parents gritted their teeth and signed me up for the middle school band, in which I was issued a French horn. Neither of them liked the brass band sound, which was going out of fashion, so after three years of that they returned the horn to the school, took me into Kingsport, and bought me an autoharp, and said "Now you can learn to play something that sounds like music. Like Maybelle Carter." 

By that time, what had once been "the Carter lick that nobody else can do" was the "lick" or "scratch" every player of a stringed instrument wanted to do; I was doing it within the year. Your thumb hits the "oom" notes on the bass side, and your fingers pick out the "pah" and melody notes on the treble side. Easy peasy. But when Maybelle Carter first recorded, nobody else was playing rhythm and melody with the same hand. It seemed difficult to those who had grown up not doing it. It was the sort of thing people learn when they try to do by themselves what they've heard or seen done by a group.

I appreciate the visuals, but that's not the version of "Little Moses" I learned. The original recorded version has a soprano lead on the chorus, which is barely discernible on the video. What I sing is the soprano melody part. 

Two more things to note about the video: (1) Older Americans didn't grin as much as Americans born after 1950 did. The natural facial expressions on that video, and the other extant video of Sara and Maybelle Carter as mostly "retired" widows singing the songs they made famous in the 1930s, have impressed some young viewers as looking "sad" or "tortured." Actually their generation was influenced by Victorian tastes, which admired "grave" expressions and manners. They are old women singing songs that must have reminded them of bygone times and losses, so feelings of pain or grief might have been present, but their brisk, rhythmic, and "grave"-faced performance showed nothing. A natural, unaffected, non-grinny attitude appeals to some people. I am one.

(2) Many of the Original Carter Family's songs didn't fit into the 1950s broadcast music culture at all. For one thing no line was drawn between religious and secular songs; traditional singers, like my family, would sing gospel songs and even High Church hymns for after-dinner home entertainment, along with popular songs and nursery songs. Also, "love" was recognized as something about as likely to be tragic as to be happy, and romantic "love" was not confused with spiritual love or elevated to the position of a supreme value or virtue. Also, in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, death was part of life; major wars and plagues were going on, people were likely to attend more funerals than weddings in any given year, even "upbeat"-sounding songs might be about someone's untimely death...

🎶

*First in a series of articles by Priscilla King on the subject of the country music highway.

Suzday Open Thread & Poetry Warning!

Garden Gate



The angel stood at the garden gate,
Burning sword in hand.
“Fear not,” he said, as they always did.



“It’s gonna be rough,” he said.
“There’ll be thorns and sweat, and pain.
“But not so fast! You’ll not go in again.”



“I promise, though,
That through the years,
Each day when work is done,
You’ll remember,
In some ancestral way,
The sweetness that lay here.” 

PB, April 23, 2025

🤍

Just A Couple of Questions For Himself One Day..

 

            “I’m feeling very privileged to be here with you, Elder Brother,” I said.
            I was sitting up on Ralph’s big cedar log, which is up the path from the Home Clearing just a hop and a skip. It was too high for me to get up there by myself, so he had to lift me and put me there! For a second I remembered times when I had been small, a child. It was like that, feeling cared for.
            I looked around myself in utter delight. It was like visiting some loved place from childhood thought forever gone. It was perfect! Every Douglas Fir was perfect! Every sound was exactly right, bird calls, wind sighing, river rustling in the distance. It even smelled wonderfully woodsy.
            “You don’t need to be formal with me, Lady,” said Ralph. “You’ll embarrass me, if you do. You wrote the stories!”
            “Ah, it’s more like I sort of remembered them, and recorded them, Ralph,” I said. “I don’t feel like I originated any of your history. Maybe you could call me a witness.”
            He laughed. I think he laughs when he finds life to be beyond his comprehension and yet piquantly delicious. He looked exactly as I remembered him. He was fully 9ft tall and powerfully built of course. His belly looked just a little middle aged. His color is what is usually called sable. It’s a very dark brown color. His hair is fine and soft and about 6 inches long over most of his body. His skin under the hair is deeply tanned in color, he has a few wrinkles on his face, and white streaks in his beard on both sides. His eyes are dark brown. His nose is broad, but fully human in form.
            He did one of those patented backwards heroic leaps up onto the big log.
            “I’m all ears,” he said, looking kindly and very still. Nobody is as still as an Elder, if he intends to be still. It’s no wonder they get labeled stumps all the time.
            “I’m still trying to work some things out in my mind,” I said. “I didn’t want to put words in your mouth without checking a few things out with you.”
            “If you think so,” he said.
            “By the way, how is your beautiful and gracious Ramona? Twigg nearing grown, and then Cherry! How wealthy you are, Ralph!”
            “As you say! Truthfully they are as you say, and I am wealthy!” said Ralph seriously.
            I didn’t have paper, recorder, or anything of the sort with me, just me and my memory.
            “I have a dumb question first. Salt. When you ate raw meat did you salt it?” said I.
            “Short answer. No. But all creatures want salt. So we would have, if we could have gotten it.”
            “I just wondered,” I said. “Because it seems like some sort of line is crossed when you begin cooking and salting meat. Of course, getting salt is one of Earth’s old stories too.”
            “That’s what I  hear. We mostly get it from Thaga. I don’t know who she gets it from! She has her ways!” said Ralph.
            “That’s about what I thought,” I said.
            “Of course,” he said. “We probably think a lot of the same stuff!”
            “Next. Dogman. Werewolf. What say you? Is this a real thing? Where did they come from?”
            “I don’t like them,” said Ralph. His brow clouded for a moment, then his smile returned.
            “Evermore!” echoed through the trees. Maeve landed with a thunk on Ralph’s shoulder. “I don’t like them either.”
            “Nobody likes them, Maeve,” said Ralph. “That must not be the point. They’re like a bad dream that got a little bit too solid. Well, actually, way too solid.
            “Of course, we don’t have them here. I wouldn’t allow it,” he added.

            "Except for Maurice! He was special. He had the ability to learn, unlike the rest of them, and he became aware of the effects of his own actions. The boy was definitely unique!" grinned Ralph, thinking of his old friend.
            “It’s like this. Every character in a story or in the world is a manifestation of thought. Somebody, or a bunch of somebodies, are having bad thoughts shaped like a big ugly dog thing,” said Ralph. “I wonder sometimes if these thoughts are like an infection, passed from parent to child, and person to person until they solidify and become literally dangerous?
            “Well, as I said, I wouldn’t allow them to exist around here,” said Ralph. “You know what though, Lady? I don’t think anybody must allow them to exist anywhere!”
            “Right, Boss,” said Maeve. “Who you let in, is a choice,” she added, enigmatically.
            “OK. That makes sense to me. Deny Dogman entry,” I noted, fully intending to stand against the mutt.
            From my seat next to Ralph, I could see down the path all the way to the fire circle. As I watched, I saw Ramona moving around making a fire, serenely, and Cherry helping a little, carrying a few sticks of wood as she drifted along by her mother’s elbow.
            I saw that the white wolf pup, Blue, waited and watched quietly, as they went about their work.
            Most likely, Twigg and the Puma Bros. were out hunting, or fishing, or some such.
            It was all perfect! There was nothing to add, or to take away.
            “There’s another thing a lot of us wonder about, Ralph,” I said.
            “What’s that?” he asked agreeably.
            “Brother, it’s those orbs. Lights. In the woods, and in the sky, and moving, or not. Many colors. What are they. Do they anything to do with your people?”
            “Oh! Yeah. Let me think for a minute. I need to say this right. It will be partly right, but not absolute.
            “As you know, we have a couple of nifty ways of getting from place to place. There are the good old dependable portals. That’s the old way. Sometimes I just wrinkle distance. I can’t make that make sense. It sounds like a dream talking, and we know how much sense dreams make. Didn’t you call them the Gardens of Synesthesia once? Yeah, you did! I heard you!
            “Sometimes I sing my way along. This is a good trick but must be done right!” he said.
            “Part of what orbs do is deal with size differentials. Like, if I had to travel to a time/world where things were 5% of what they are in size here, some adjustments would need to be made.
            “They’re kind of like a subway. But also, sometimes when you see an orb, it’s just a visitor from Out There on some business here.” Then he winked at me.
            “Is that good enough,” he asked.
            “Yes, Elder Brother. That’s good enough. I probably wouldn’t understand the physics even if you said the words to me. I get the flavor of it,” said I.
            “Alright, Scribe, since you insist on speaking formally, would you care to dine with my family and I tonight?” said Ralph.
            I gazed at him sitting there. I was thinking of what to say to him.
            Finally, I said, “I’m not sure even the orbs could help me there. I think I will leave you all my blessings and like, leave. Will you help me down off of here, Ralphie?”
            He had a brief fit of the giggles. Maeve flew off toward the fire because her footing had gotten wiggly.
            “I don’t even need to do that, Scribe. Close your eyes. When you open them again, you will be back in Milltown looking at your screen, working away on your keyboard!” he said. 
            And you know what? He was correct! But then, Ralph is always right! When the king’s in his castle, all’s right with the world.

💚