Last Carter Family Member Dies

Janette Carter, the last surviving member of legendary country music institution the Carter Family, died yesterday of Parkinson's disease and other health complications at the age of eighty-two.

Carter's parents, A.P. and Sara Carter, founded the Carter Family as a trio in 1926, along with A.P.'s sister-in-law Maybelle. (Maybelle's daughter, June, wife of Johnny Cash, became one of the better-known Family members.) The family became one of country music's first stars and recorded more than three hundred folk songs (songs in the public domain), which later became known as Carter songs.

Janette Carter had upheld the traditional country repertoire of her family — along with the country and folk music of Appalachia — through weekly performances, even in recent years, and was an accomplished autoharp player. In September, Carter was honored by the National Endowment for the Arts with the Bess Lomax Hawes Award, which recognized her effort to preserve and perform Appalachian music.

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Song Stories

“Too Close”

Next | 1998

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'" 

More Song Stories entries »

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