270 PART 3 | FROM WORLD WAR I THROUGH WORLD WAR II
Mississippi John Hurt. Whether the composer of the gospel hymn, Charles
Gabriel, took the melody from folk practice or vice versa is impossible to deter-
mine, but it surely did not originate with A. P. Carter.
The lyrics of Carter’s chorus begin with a phrase almost identical to the hymn’s
title, but the resemblance ends there. Whereas the hymn focuses on the reunion
of family members in the afterlife, A. P.’s song focuses on earthly bereavement:
the death of the song persona’s mother. Despite the chorus’s assertion that
“there’s a better home awaiting in the sky,” the song’s emotional gravity is cen-
tered in the grief and loss expressed in the verses. Rather than simply reworking
the hymn, Carter has taken the title as a point of entry for the creation of a dif-
ferent song.
The Carter Family’s singing style and the song are perfectly suited to each other.
Sara Carter’s straightforward, unemotional alto evokes the deadpan performance
tradition of Anglo-Celtic ballads. The chorus features all three singers harmonizing
in the three-voice texture of old-fashioned southern shape-note hymnody: a central
melodic line with a higher countermelody, over a structural bass line. (Compare the
setting of New Britain [“Amazing Grace”] illustrated in chapter 3.) A. P. had learned
to read shape notes from his uncle, a singing-school master, and Sara and Maybelle
had surely also grown up with the sound of shape-note hymnody, which in their
day was merging with the later gospel hymn repertory. A Carter Family innovation
was to apply this style of harmonizing to secular songs—often pious and moralistic,
but defi nitely not hymns—and accompany it with Maybelle’s driving guitar.
Each of the song’s eight-bar verses comprises two musical phrases, aa', cor-
responding to the two lines of a rhymed couplet. The chorus uses the same music
as the verse. A rhythmic oddity recurs throughout: here and there, a bar con-
sists of three beats instead of the usual four. Such irregularities are common in
the singing of early blues and country musicians but usually are disregarded as
momentary aberrations of solo performance. Here, though, all three perform-
ers drop a beat together, and the dropped beat is always in the same places: in
the sixth bar of the verse, and in the second and sixth bars of the chorus. By
dropping beats where they do, the singers press on to complete the phrases with
added urgency.
“Can the Circle Be Unbroken” represented a departure for hillbilly records,
which before 1927 had emphasized either vocal solos or, more commonly, string
band instrumentals with only incidental singing. Hereafter, many country acts
would imitate the Carters’ harmonized singing, sentimental songs emphasizing
family and traditional moral values, and energetic guitar picking.JIMMIE RODGERS: AMERICA’S SINGING BRAKEMAN
Recording the Carter Family on August 1 and 2 would have been enough in itself
to make Ralph Peer’s 1927 fi eld trip to Bristol a historic occasion. But to top it off,
on August 4 another musician walked into the makeshift Victor studio in Bristol
to make his fi rst records. Those records would make Jimmie Rodgers the fi rst
undisputed solo star of country music.
Born near Meridian, Mississippi, in 1897, Jimmie Rodgers picked up music
informally in poolrooms and barbershops as a child. After winning a talent
contest at the age of twelve, he ran away from home to join a medicine show.
Brought back home, he joined his father’s railroad work crew, and over the nextthe Carters’ vocal styleK Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933),
the fi rst country singing star,
capitalized on his early years as a
brakeman by occasionally posing
and performing in railroad garb.172028_11_254-279_r3_ko.indd 270 23/01/13 8:42 PM