Summary: This week, Carter Family legacy, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and country music superstar Carlene Carter recorded live at Ozark Folk Center State Park in Mountain View, Arkansas. Also, interviews with this scion of American music royalty. Carlene Carter is an American country singer and songwriter. She is the daughter of June Carter and her first husband, Carl Smith. Between 1978 and the present, Carter has recorded twelve albums, primarily on major labels. In the same timespan, she has released more than twenty singles, including three No. 3-peaking hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Carlene has always straddled the line between country and rock, following her own path. As a rock singer in the mid-'70s, she became immersed in the new wave before emerging as a new country singer in the late '80s. Through it all, her music has always infused roots music with a nervy, edgy energy. Her mother, June Carter-Cash would frequently take her daughter on Carter Family tours, which meant that Carlene developed a musical interest at an early age. When she was 12, her mother married Johnny Cash. Following the marriage, Carlene and her stepsister, Rosanne Cash, became backup singers in the Carter/Cash touring show. In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator, and country music legacy Mark Jones offers a 1978 archival recording of Ozark original Pappy Shorey and his shape note singers performing the hymn “How Beautiful Heaven Must Be,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives. Writer, musician, and traditional dancer Aubrey Atwater discusses the surprising origins of yodeling and its appearance in generations of traditional folk and popular music throughout the world with musical examples and her own cultivated insight.
