| 'Carlene Carter's Back In Town' (Page Two) |
| The process of finding that style began with her mother and her aunts, Helen and Anita, altogether The Carter Sisters. After she returned from London to Tennessee, Carlene worked the road with them for almost two years, and, singing those sweet harmonies on those lovely old songs--the same deeply rooted, enormously influential music those same women were making around her when she was just a tot--she began to get the idea that country wasn't as uncool as she'd been thinking it was (and she had been thinking that; in her 20's she'd been much more anxious to shed the family heritage than embrace it). She found herself feeling more comfortable as a Carter Sister than she'd ever felt on stage, and also she |
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| really appreciated country audiences. "They're so nice to you," she says with a touch of wonder still in her voice, echoing the amazement of many a performer accustomed to the raunch and rudeness of rock. The final piece fell into place when she came to a basic realization about herself as an artist. She'd already proved that she could write whatever good, commercial songs the market demanded (acts as different as The Doobie Brothers and The Go Go's have had hits with her material), but "I wanted to write about what I knew about, which was all this, the whole country world I was raised in. And really, you can't write a song about riding in a hillbilly Cadillac with your grandmother, and have them play it on rock radio. Nobody gives a damn." The song "Me And The Wildwood Rose" is the one she's talking about, an achingly moving memoir of Maybelle seen in the eyes of a child and held in the heart of a mourner. It's a clear, wonderfully evocative song which tells you just what it was like for a little girl snugged down on quilts on the floor of that touring Cadillac with her family all around her (Maybelle driving), and yu feel just the sense of love and loss that grown woman means to communicate: the warmth of childhood happiness remembered always, the chill of childhood security gone long ago. And of course this gem of a song both reflects the theme of The Carter Family classic it echoes and gives us the answer to the question that classic poses. Yes, with Carlene back home in every important way, the circle will be unbroken. Carlene's work with The Carter Sisters coincided with the beginnings of her recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, and for her that was both very fortunate--you'd be hard pressed to find a more sobriety-encouraging environment than a cocoon of Carter women--and very nice. "I got to go back and be a kid again, you see," she says, "I left home so young that I never quite got my kid stuff out. I mean, in those two years I got to be with Helen and Anita. I used to cry to stay with my Aunt Helen when I was a little kid! And they taught me so much in those two years, just with the grace with which they do things, and their humor; they laugh at everything. It was wonderful to be with them as a grownup, and not be dulled to it by not being sober." That jogs my memory, and I recall a day at the Cash/Carter house when June Carter told me, with great joy, about her daughter's then-new sobriety. "that makes a full set, Patrick!" She laughed, "All my babies are sober now!" (June's 'babies' including, in this context, her husband as well as her daughters and stepdaughters.) Carlene grins when she hears that. "You know," she says, "I remember my mom being around then saying to me, 'honey, you're doing all the thinks I always knew you could do.'" She looks down at the table, and her grin becomes a long, reflective smile of pleasure. It's a good moment, the kind that happens from time to time as a person emerges from the darkness of addiction and alcoholism. We talk for a long time about recovery, but the subject isn't something either of us wants to overemphasize. The differences in Carlene stoned and sober are obvious enough--she made I Fell In Love sober, and Warner Brothers trusted her to do so, and now she's taking exceptionally good care of business as opposed to "hiding out in my house, peepeing out the window" (or pushing up Tennessee daisies)--and so we'll confine ourselves to concluding remarks: what Carlene sees as the biggest change in herself since she quit drinking and drugging. |
| (Carlene as a child with Maybelle and June Carter) |
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| I guess I'm not scared that I'm doing the wrong things anymore. I'm not all filled with guilt, because I'm really trying my best to be a good person. I took an awful lot for granted before, and I lost an awful lot--I think God wanted to tach me a lesson about that--but now it's all coming around again. I think everything comes back the way it should be if you try real hard to be upright. Don't you?" |
| Carlene with her daughter Tiffany |