Carlene Carter

A third-generation member of America's preeminent country music family, Carlene Carter is the granddaughter of Mother Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family, and daughter of June Carter Cash and '50s country star Carl Smith. Since she began recording in the late '70s, Carlene Carter evolved from a twangy rocker to a successful country singer/songwriter in the early '90s.

Carter spent her early years in Nashville; her parents divorced and her mother married Johnny Cash when Carlene was 12. As a child, she often traveled with her mother, aunts, and grandmother, who toured as Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters. Carter learned to play the piano at six and the guitar at 10, and began singing onstage during her family’s shows. After two brief teenage marriages, during which she had two children, Carter appeared sporadically as a member of the Carter Family revue.

In 1978 Carter recorded her first, self-titled album in England, backed by Graham Parker’s band, the Rumour. A collection of upbeat, piano-based pop songs, Carlene Carter received some favorable notices but flopped. Her second album, Two Sides to Every Woman, recorded with New York session players, rocked harder, but lacked personality - though Carter herself certainly did not. At a performance in a New York club to support the album, she introduced one of its racier songs with the comment, “If this song doesn’t put the cunt back in country, nothing will.” Unbeknownst to her, her stepfather and mother were in the audience. The comment briefly caused a family riff, and earned Carter a Playboy award, for Quote of the Year.

In the late ’70s Carter married her third husband, British singer/songwriter/producer Nick Lowe [see entry], whose band mates in Rockpile, Dave Edmunds and Billy Bremner, joined him in backing her on her raucous country-rock breakthrough album Musical Shapes (#139, 1980). Though still far from a commercial success, the album won critical raves and broadened Carter’s audience.

Disappointing followup albums, Blue Nun and C’est C Bon, as well as personal problems (an ectopic pregnancy that almost killed her and the breakup of her marriage to Lowe), put Carter out of commission in the mid-’80s. The party lifestyle had also taken its toll, and Carter temporarily quit the music business. In 1986 she began touring with the Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash revue. Stating, “It was time to learn about my heritage,” Carter dug into her country roots wholeheartedly for the first time, and after two years of performing with her family, she returned to Nashville drug- and alcohol-free and eager to commence her solo career.

In 1990 Carter hit country chart pay dirt with I Fell in Love (#19 C&W), an album ranging from progressive country rock to traditional Appalachian folk and produced by Tom Petty bassist Howie Epstein. The album yielded several C&W hit singles: the title track (#3 C&W, 1990), “Come On Back” (#3 C&W, 1990), “The Sweetest Thing” (#25 C&W, 1991), and “One Love” (#33 C&W, 1991). Little Love Letters (#35 C&W, 1993), again produced by Epstein, with whom Carter was living, featured Heartbreaker keyboardist Benmont Tench, as well as guitarists John Jorgenson, Albert Lee, and NRBQ’s Al Anderson, who toured with Carter. Anderson and Carter cowrote the album’s #3 C&W hit, “Every Little Thing.” Little Acts of Treason (#65 C&W, 1995) did not fare as well, and Carter has kept a low profile since.

from The Rolling Ston Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)