The Carter Family, “Motherless Children”
The Carter Family plays their version of this classic with their typical astringent beauty. I’ve been listening to their Victor recordings all the way through, and the depth of their interactions —among other things— has been gripping. Here the attraction is Maybelle’s guitar — the run of notes she plays in the introduction and between the verses diverges from the main melody to suggest her own aloof perspective on the song’s drama, the notes played here and there with a bluesy trill as if she’s skipping lightly through the song. So then A.P. and Sara are singing as if they are warning Maybelle, hewing closely to the melody, singing the song’s grim wisdom with brute redundancy: “motherless children have a hard time…when mother’s dead” (well, of course mother’s dead if we’re singing of “motherless children,” no? It is as if we are all just motherless children in waiting).
Below a photo of Sara and Maybelle from 1919: Maybelle is on the autoharp and Sara holds the banjo.
