The Winding Stream: The Carters, the Cashes and the Course of Country Music by Beth Harrington (review)

Like an archaeologist (and genealogist), Beth Harrington digs deeply into the lives of the original Carter Family, excavating and explicating their lives, as seen and retold by friends, two generations of their kin, a few scholars, and a who’s who of Americana musicians. The film is decidedly a tribute to the family, their descendants, and their legacies—by blood, marriage, and music. The Winding Stream launched officially at the Austin, Texas, famed SXSW in 2014, toured vigorously across the United States at prestigious film festivals, and has been reviewed in Rolling Stone, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter, as well as newspapers, electronic forums, and blogs.

This reviewer was fortunate to view the film three times, including a public screening on April 9, 2015, at the twenty-first annual Delta Symposium, in partnership with the inaugural Delta Flix Film and Media Festival, at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. Harrington was the keynote speaker; symposium organizers tied her film to the university’s recent acquisition, restoration, and public opening of Johnny Cash’s childhood home in Dyess, Arkansas. Cash, his daughter Rosanne, and son John Carter are key contributors to the film’s content, each sitting for substantive interviews and providing some insight into the original Carter Family trio. The Cashes are named in the film title and are integral to the story about “the course of country music,” insomuch as they were influenced by, and related to, the Carters. Fully half of the film covers the childhoods, courtships, and unexpected musical career of the trio. Harrington explores the headwaters of the stream—the story, or stories, of A.P., Sara, and Maybelle. Even when Harrington introduces family members into the narrative, they are named in captions with notations about their places in the clan and their relationships to members of the trio: daughters, sons, grandsons, granddaughters, and nieces. For instance, Johnny Cash, who likely needs the least introduction to most audiences, is identified as “Maybelle’s son-in-law.”

Harrington has provided a Carter Family primer in film, one easily accessible to twenty-first-century viewers, including students of folklore, oral history, documentary studies, and ethnomusicology. Additionally, she avoids the downfall of many a documentary film by telling the story in under two hours. For such a seemingly brief documentary, the film weaves interviews with 12 family members, and another dozen or so musicians (whose testimonials are often accompanied by a verse or more of a Carter classic). On the whole, the musicians, who span two or three generations themselves, put A.P., Sara, and Maybelle on a pedestal. Family members flesh out their elders’ humanity, recounting broken hearts, broken promises, unfulfilled dreams, unfulfilled fortunes, and rich lives. In a key segment, the audience learns about A.P.’s role as songcatcher, including his travels with co-collector Lesley Riddle. Harrington’s interviews with musician and traditional music aficionado Dom Flemons and Carter family member Rita Forrester unpack some complexities of A.P.’s friendship and business partnership with Riddle, as well as moving songs from the oral tradition to songwriting credit and commercial recording.

A handful of scholars, including folklorists Peggy Bulger, Charles Wolfe, and Mike Seeger, help Harrington wade more fully into the cultural significance of the original Carters. Wolfe, for instance, narrates much of the fateful story of Ralph Peer, A.P., Sara, and Maybelle’s first and subsequent recording sessions in Bristol, Tennessee. Later, Seeger frames the re-launch of Maybelle’s career as a beloved guitar innovator who tours the country, performing at American universities and folk revival festivals for audiences of “hippies,” who were known to stand uncharacteristically in reverence when she entered the stage.

Harrington extracts endearing, sometimes quirky backstories, especially when she introduces the audience to the Carters’ “border radio” career. The filmmaker includes fascinating information via author Bill Crawford, not only as he explains the source of border radio’s...