These days, there’s an entire generation who think of the good old days as a time before the interstate was always bumper to bumper, when you could shop in a store with less than 30 aisles, and when you could hear new hit songs on your transistor AM radio.

For this series, we are going much further back than that, to a time when a previous generation had very different things come to mind when thinking about ‘the good ol’ days’. For a previous generation, they were probably trying to recall a time when the road leading to your town was unpaved, when you bought your groceries at the same place you picked up your mail, and you heard new music by listening to your neighbor peck out a tune from a new piece of sheet music.

This is the world we cover in this series, the world of the Carter Family, only their existence was even more rural, even more distinctly American than most of us can even imagine. They began their career at a time when the recording industry was still trying to get a foothold, and when a horse was still a practical substitute for an automobile. Songs were overheard and ‘gathered’ by those capable of remembering them well enough to play them and sing them, even if (especially when) some artistic license was taken with the base material. American music as we know it was built on the backs of music like this. In this series we hear the very invention of what would come to be known as country music, but it is also so much more than that. This is the beginning tale of the Carter Family.

Featured tracks include;

1) My Clinch Mountain Home

2) Engine 143

3) Wildwood Flower

4) Chewing Gum

5) The Wandering Boy

6) Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow

7) The Storms Are on the Ocean