The Carter Family Album: “Proper Introduction to the Carter Family: Keep on the Sunny Side”

You get several picture-ful phamplets included in the deluxe packaged cd! It is priced at a budget affordable price. It includes all of thier seminal early essential sides, and captures them at thier creative peak. If you don't have any backwoods old timey vinatge 1930's mountian music, this is where to start. This is the half of what influenced later bands like Bob Wills, Hank Penny, and Spade Cooley(of couse the other half of the influence would have been Jelly Roll Morton or Fats Waller). Great cd.

There are several excellent one-CD compilations of the Carter Family, but this looks like the most for the money. But if you are just starting out, you might check some of the exceptional box sets that are available. Proper itself puts out "Proper Box" collections of 4-CD sets for between $18 and $25, depending on where you buy them (Amazon marketplace, e.g.). So you can get 4 times the Carters for about double the price. (There are, in fact 2 4-CD sets of the Carters, early and late career.) Give a listen first. The Carters are old-timey but NOT shrill; there is a dreamy, mournful, sweetness in their singing that makes them utterly sublime--unlike their contemporary Jimmy Rodgers (the Blue yodeller), who is great fun, just as historically significant, but has much less range and interest than do the wonderful Carters.

I have several albums of the Carter Family. This one must rank as number 1. The 25 selections must have been taken from original 1929 recordings. I recommend all lovers of the Carter Family buy this album.

The Carter Family were one of the greatst musical families of the 1930s. Their songs were pure country and you could feel the hard times in their music that affected everyone during the great depression.