Keeper of the Fold

"We knew it was bad," Joe said, "but there wasn't nothin' we could do to make it any better." The tension spilled over at home. A.P. was given to dark rages and would vent them upon Joe more often than upon his sisters. Sara's absence meant that A.P. could no longer do the one thing in which he could excel. The loss of the music and the loss of Sara was almost more than he could bear. Joe, though, knew only that he had a father unlike other fathers.

In 1941, Life magazine came to Virginia to do a photo essay on the Carter Family, and Sara returned as she usually did for such things. In the family shots, A.P. stood apart, while Joe, aged 14, looked diffident and ill-at-ease. The photo spread was preempted by Pearl Harbor, and the original Carter Family had already made their last recordings. Joe left home as soon as he could and joined the Navy during the last years of the war. He lived in California and East Tennessee before returning to Hiltons. Married three times, he had a son who predeceased him and three daughters. Like most of his kin, he was fiercely protective of his family. Last year, he took part in a documentary on the Carter Family that I helped research for WNPT (scheduled to air this May on The American Experience); when we pre-interviewed him, he talked so candidly that we wondered why no one had interviewed him in depth, but when the cameras rolled, Joe was engaging but guarded.

Music didn't tempt Joe as it tempted nearly every other Carter sibling; only his older sister, Gladys, kept a lower profile. "I couldn't make it thumping on a guitar," he said. "I wasn't interested that much, but gimme a handsaw and a clawhammer, and I can get right in there with the best of 'em." And it was with the clawhammer and handsaw that he made Janette's (and, by implication, his father's) dream come true. He eventually came to enjoy his moments onstage and appeared regularly at the Fold until Feb. 19 this year. Pancreatic cancer took his life on Wednesday, March 2. Among those attending the funeral were Maybelle's grandson, John Carter Cash; her granddaughter, Carlene Carter; and Joe's neighbor, Tom T. Hall.