Born on This Day in 1891, the Founding Member of Country Music’s First Family Who Brought Early Country Music From the Mountains to the Masses

On this day (December 15) in 1891, Alvin Pleasant Delaney “A.P.” Carter was born in Maces Spring, Virginia. He was a founding member of the Carter Family. The group was responsible for transforming folk songs into country standards. Carter was responsible for gathering and arranging new songs for the band.

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Carter grew up in a musical family. His father was a locally renowned banjo player, and his mother had an impressive repertoire of folk ballads. Additionally, his uncle, Flanders Bays, was a singing instructor who taught Carter to read music with hymnals, which also added many gospel songs to his repertoire.

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By the time Carter was an adult, he had become a singer who could play the guitar and fiddle, and read music. He had also found his passion for creating fresh arrangements of old songs. According to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Carter spent time traveling the country before returning to Virginia to take a job selling fruit trees. Soon after, he met Sara Dougherty. According to family legend, she was sitting under a tree with her autoharp singing “Engine 143” when the pair met.

Before the Carter Family formed, A.P. and Sara Carter sang and performed for friends and neighbors in their community. It was the beginning of one of the most important groups in country music history.

A.P. Carter Helps Establish the Carter Family

The Carter Family, as the world would know them, came together in 1927. A.P. Carter’s brother, Ezra, and his wife, Maybelle, joined the group. Where many duos or groups in the mountains sang unaccompanied, the new group featured Maybelle’s guitar, Sara’s autoharp, and A.P.’s fiddle. They were also influential in developing the harmony singing style popular across country music today.

Carter and his friend, local Black musician Lesley Riddle, went on several song-catching trips. During these trips, the pair learned folk ballads, fiddle tunes, and other songs grown in the rich soil of the Appalachian region. Carter then created musical arrangements for the song, taught them to the rest of the band, and added them ot the group’s repertoire.

In the summer of 1927, the Carter Family traveled from Virginia to Bristol, Tennessee, to take part in recording sessions for the Victor Talking Machine Company. During the Bristol Sessions, dubbed the Big Bang of Country Music, the band recorded six songs. Those singles sold well. As a result, the Carter Family recorded hundreds of songs for the label, introducing countless listeners to songs they likely never would have heard without them.

Nearly a century later, many of the Carter Family’s songs are still popular among country and bluegrass fans. For instance, they popularized songs like “Wildwood Flower,” “Wabash Cannonball,” and “Worried Man’s Blues.”

It is impossible to overstate the importance of A.P. and the rest of the Carter Family to country music.

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