Of all the Carters, June alone qualified as a born performer — albeit one whose musical growth and maturity took decades, borne out by this admirably organized two-disc, 40-song survey of her 64-year musical journey.
Most of June’s recordings were ultimately unsuccessful in the marketplaces of the 1950s and early ’60s, the consequence of her diffuse performing style that mixed music and exuberant country humor. She’d developed her flair for comedy as a child, in part to compensate for insecurities about her singing. A.P. Carter himself encouraged her antics and showcased her on the original Carters’ 1939 Border Radio broadcasts, as represented by her sassy “Oh Susannah”.
When Maybelle and the Carter Sisters emerged from the ruins of the Original Carters in 1943, June’s rustic alter ego, “Aunt Polly,” gave way to “Little Junie,” the comic persona she used from then on. After signing the group to RCA in 1949, A&R man Steve Sholes, impressed by June’s piss-and-vinegar vocals on “Root Hog Or Die”, teamed her with Homer & Jethro for an ultrahillbilly duet on “Baby It’s Cold Outside”. Sholes based the idea on Red Ingle’s 1947 hit “Tim-Tay-Shun”, an exaggerated backwoods spin on the pompous, overblown pop ballad “Temptation”, twangily vocalized by smooth pop chanteuse Jo Stafford as “Cinderella G. Stump.” (It was telling that June reprised “Tim-Tay-Shun” on her final album, 2003′s Wildwood Flower.)
Her skills with straight-ahead country were always strong, as evidenced by the “Baby It’s Cold Outside” B-side “Country Girl” (a cover of Little Jimmy Dickens’ hit “Country Boy” that hasn’t previously been reissued). Once the Carters joined the Opry in 1950, Little Junie’s onstage antics gave her near-parity with legendary Opry clowns Minnie Pearl and Rod Brasfield. Nonetheless, while she recorded with the Carter Sisters and alone for Columbia, her diversity worked against her, particularly in an era when female country stars were still an exotic idea. Few noticed her rousing duet on “Love Oh Crazy Love” with Nashville superstar Carl Smith, her husband at the time.
After divorcing Smith in 1956, as rock put country through changes both dramatic and traumatic, June moved to Manhattan to study acting. She recorded nothing between 1956 and 1962, when she briefly joined Liberty as a solo act and recorded several singles, including “The Heel”. It was a recitation conceived as ersatz melodrama, but a hyperactive arrangement made it impossible to decipher the lyrics. By then, Maybelle and her daughters, who’d reverted to the Carter Family name, had joined Johnny Cash’s touring show, which eventually proved musically and personally beneficial to him and to June.
The personal benefits everyone knows. The musical benefits began in 1963 when she and Merle Kilgore wrote the Cash classic “Ring Of Fire” (represented here by the Carters’ sweet, ethereal 1964 version). The breakout came with 1967′s “Jackson”, an explosive hit duet that pitted his sardonic humor against her comedic flair. Her solo efforts, however, remained spotty. The unfocused 1971 gospel original “A Good Man” was a stumble. Redemption loomed in the distance.
It came with her first solo album, 1975′s Appalachian Pride, produced by Cash and included here in its entirety. Shamefully overlooked at the time, it revealed that, at 46, June Carter Cash had finally found herself. Mature and confident, true to her Poor Valley roots, she seamlessly blended her voice (then at its peak) with her comedic and dramatic experience. Everything, from the witty “Gatsby’s Restaurant” to the moving title song, wears well three decades later.
Appalachian Pride anticipated her autumnal albums, 1999′s Press On and 2003′s Wildwood Flower, by a quarter-century. She completed the latter just before she died that May, a few months before her husband’s passing. One track from each album reveals that her voice, while ravaged by time and illness, had only expanded its power to move and inspire. Still, the most haunting moment comes on “Far Side Banks Of Jordan”, a 1976 duet with John where art truly anticipates life. As she sings of preceding him into the hereafter, the melange of joy, dramatic understatement and crystal-clear voice reiterates her ultimate triumph.
