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Performers Column
by Joel Mabus
written April 2002
Carter Family Words
Joel Mabus
Last time we had an appreciation of the 75th anniversary of Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag. But 2002 is also the diamond anniversary of the Carter Family’s recording debut in Bristol TN, in 1927. (The Carter Family of Virginia being the early stars of old-time country music and known for their earthy songs of love, death and homely virtues – they were awarded the Folk Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.) An internet acquaintance of mine, Rob Hutten, posted an bit of data to an email list lately. He had found a website that contained all of the lyrics to all of the Carter Family songs. Rob did a word search and compiled the most frequently used words, omitting, of course, the common verbs, articles, conjunctions etc. Any word appearing in ten or more songs was included. I thought the list read rather nicely, especially in reverse order. I've arranged the list so that some words appear together, but these are not phrases, per se -- just words that happen to lie next to each other in the list.
So here, starting with the word used 25 times in 18 songs (friends) in ascending order to the word used most, 262 times in 101 songs, (love) are the favorite words of the Carter Family:
Carter Family Words
(a found poem)
friends kiss
shore
flowers
pain
sweetheart darling
weeping death
golden god
sad rose
cold birds
lonely sun
loving fair sky
dying free
Jesus
blues song
bright grave place
roam singing
dead poor
goodbye tonight
mountain years
beautiful miss
forget
sing boy
soul
roses
land
life
eyes time
true night
blue happy
lonesome girl
heaven alone
loved darling
sweet world
Lord
mother dear
away
heart
sea
little home
love
