PBS is doing an American Experience tonight on my favorite country clan--yes, I have one--The Carter Family.
Maybelle, June, A.P., Roxanne Cash . . . But they always neglect Carlene. My favorite.
I know she was never influential like her mom or especially her grandmother, and her early albums were kind of uneven, and then she gave up the blend that made her unique for standard radio country, but she left a deep mark on me.
I got her first album, Carlene Carter, my senior year in high school. "Alabama Morning" made me hungry for the South that had always given me the shivers, and the tragic love songs--her voice was angelic, but sincere. I couldn't wait to experience love so I could feel crushed like that.
I liked this site that sets out to plug her greatest hits album, but does a nice little job briefly capturing her career. (Not much sign of that in the past decade.) The best part was this quote from Carlene herself, on that first effort:
"I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want to be just another girl singer and do just another album in Nashville with the same session pickers who play on every other girl’s album."
I knew she was special the first time I slapped it on the turntable. I wasn't sure exactly who Nick Lowe or The Rumor were, but I understood they were some important brit rockers working with this kinda country chick and I really enjoyed the fusion.
Good take on that here:
By recording her debut album in England, Carlene Carter served notice that despite coming from a legendary American country music family, she intended to make her own way in the biz and establish her own musical identity. So while there's a strong country-rock vibe throughout Carlene Carter, it's filtered through the British pub rock sensibilities of the Rumour, whose members produce, arrange, and play on all of the tracks on this album (with occasional cameo appearances from pub rock icons Graham Parker, Terry Williams, and Nick Lowe). The results of this transatlantic crossbreeding are generally winning, if a little uneven; on a few tracks, it seems as if both Carter and the Rumour are keeping some of their energy in check as they try to feel each other out.
Such a promising start, but the longer I watched her, the more her life turned into a cautionary tale. Nobody wanted that delerious fusion. Not the radio stations, anyway. Rock or country, pick one. Goofballs.
So decades later, few of us have ever heard of her. But enough, maybe. Who knows who was out there listening. Me, for example. Heehehe. I still think Musical Shapes ended up the finest Rockpile album, but that first attempt is the one I tend to look back on wistfully.
OK, just dug it out of the vinyl stack buried in my closet. Apparently you still can't get her early stuff on CD over here (the U.S.). Luckily, I finally got a turntable a few months ago, after maybe a ten-year absense.
Wow. Listened to the ones she wrote, "Who Needs Words" and "I Once Knew Love," and I'm blissful but balling my eyes out. ("I once knew love, but it never knew me well . . . Who needs words, when there's eyes like yours.)
Got that wish about getting crushed a few times. Can't remember if this is how I imagined it.
Not too far off on the feeling, I think, but the source of the pain, that one I did not see coming. The feeling is very similar to what I was experiencing then: not the pain of love, but the pain of withholding it. Just cuts a lot deeper once you've held it in your arms lost it.
Don't think I realized that would be the hard part. I expected the pain to be about the wounds inflicted in the fighting. Nope. The album closes with this line from "Who Needs Words": "There's no friends like old lovers, and there's no one like you."
No one in the world like D. Or T. Or G. I can feel right now, the way each one of them made me glow when they walked in the room. Each in a different way. That I never felt before. And never will again.
Dutton (Penguin) in early 2009. 
