American Experience

Recalls "the first family of country music" in interviews with Carter relatives, music writers, and singers Gillian Welch, Joan Baez, Marty Stuart and Rodney Crowell. The tough early lives of A.P. Carter, his sister Maybelle and wife Sara were lightened by music, and their 1927 RCA audition proved to be "the big bang of commercial country music." But A.P. and Sara's marriage couldn't survive the turmoil that followed.