“What is that hillbilly **** Stinson put on the CD?”
A former boss uttered these shameful words. I just looked at him and smiled. And, I thought, “Father, forgive him, for he knows not what he said.”
He was speaking of a CD the company had made to celebrate a move to a new office. Each of us had chosen a favorite song for a CD to be mailed to clients.
Forty years ago, on October 23, 1978, the Matriarch of county music, Mother Maybelle Carter passed. She, as a member of the Carter Family, recorded music in 1927 that, 90 years later, is still some of the best loved in music.
The hillbilly song was, “Wildwood Flower,” sung by the Mother Maybelle and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
Maybelle was a virtuoso guitar player and popularized what became to be known as the “Carter Scratch.” Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg write in Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? The Carter Family and Their Musical Legacy in American Music:
By the end of the twenties, Maybelle’s Carter scratch—graceful and thumpingly rhythmic at once—was the most widely imitated guitar style in music. Nobody did as much to popularize the guitar, because from the beginning her playing was as distinctive as any voice. “She could make that guitar talk to you,” says Ruby Parker, who was schooled on the instrument by Maybelle.
My mother, a devoted mandolin player, passed in 2013. I asked a member of the Baltimore Mandolin Orchestra to play the Carter Family anthem, “Will the Circle be Unbroken” at the funeral. She responded, “Oh, I can’t play the Carter Scratch!” When I assured her that was not necessary, she agreed to play it “straight.”
In 1965, John McEuen, who later was a member of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, stood on his tiptoes to peer through a window into the Grand Old Opry - Zwonitzer/Hirshberg:
“We were just in time,” he [McEuen] remembers, “to hear Lester Flatt announce, ‘We’re gonna bring Mama Maybelle Carter out here to do the “Wildwood Flower.”’ Seeing Maybelle walk out on that stage to do that song was one of the most powerful moments of my life. And I said to myself, someday I’m going to play with that woman.”
In 1972, McEuen got his wish. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band paired with many old guard Country Music and Bluegrass greats to create the seminal album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken. The album introduced a new generation to the wonder of Mother Maybelle and the Carter Family. Making the album, Maybelle entered the studio and began to tune her guitar, Zwonitzer/Hirshberg:
“Maybelle,” he [MeEuen] asked her, “are you gonna stay tuned like that for all the songs we do?”
“Well, I may do ‘Wildwood Flower’ on the autoharp,” she said demurely, then added, “if you all don’t mind?”
McEuen bit his tongue. “I wanted to say, ‘What the **** do you mean, ‘If we all don’t mind?’ To me it was exactly like Jimi Hendrix saying, ‘I’d like to play “Foxey Lady” in E with a flatted thirteenth, if you all don’t mind.’ I was thinking, ‘Just line us up and tell us how to do it!’”
Not long after my boss’s outburst, he called me in his office. “One of our best clients called and said he was glad to see “Wildwood Flower” on the CD.”
I looked at him and smiled. And, thought, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
How about you? What is your favorite music? Share a story!
Blog Notes (yuk! yuk!):
Listen and enjoy “Wildwood Flower” with Mother Maybelle from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band from the album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken. And, buy the album here.
Read and enjoy “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? The Carter Family and Their Musical Legacy in American Music by Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg
