When the Man in Black Married Into the First Family of Country Music

When Johnny Cash wed June Carter, the Man in Black married into the First Family of Country Music.

The Carter Family — A.P., Sara and Maybelle — defined country music with their plain-spoken lyrics and Maybelle's distinctive guitar picking style, the one where the melody lives on the bass strings while the thumb keeps everything moving. They were the first country music stars, recorded in a hotel in Bristol, Tennessee in 1927. And Johnny Cash, decades later, was the biggest, with records like "I Walk the Line" and "Ring of Fire" — the latter written by June herself, with Merle Kilgore.

What made this a good season for a family chorus is that the Carter repertoire was built for exactly this. "Keep on the Sunny Side" and "Can the Circle Be Unbroken" were songs for porches and church halls, meant to be sung by whoever was there, in whatever parts they could manage. Our program mixed them with Cash's: "Get Rhythm," "Wabash Cannonball," "Folsom Prison Blues," "Wildwood Flower," "Fifty Miles of Elbow Room," "Jackson," and "Daddy Sang Bass" to bring it home.

That last one contains what might be the best single line about why any of us do this:

Daddy sang bass, Mama sang tenor / Me and little brother would join right in there / 'Cause singin' seems to help a troubled soul.

Cowboy boots were encouraged.