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La familia Carter
Ganadora de un prestigioso premio Eisner, he aquí la historia de la familia de granjeros que creó la música country e influyó en Johny Cash, Woody Guthrie y Bob Dylan.
Una biografía ilustrada única, una premiada novela gráfica que narra la historia de la mítica Familia Carter, el primer supergrupo de country de la historia, que realizó centenares de grabaciones y vendió millones de discos, revolucionando el concepto de la música popular. Muchas de sus canciones, desde Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? o Wildwood Flower a Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, han marcado e influenciado a generaciones enteras de músicos, desde Woody Guthrie a Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan y Johnny Cash (que acabó casándose con la famosa June Carter Cash). Un relato en movimiento que revela el ascenso de la familia al éxito, las luchas que tuvieron que librar a lo largo del camino y su impacto en la música contemporánea. Una historia de éxito y de fracaso, de riqueza y de pobreza, de racismo y de tolerancia, de creatividad y de negocios, en suma, del poder de la música y del amor.
Una biografía ilustrada única, una premiada novela gráfica que narra la historia de la mítica Familia Carter, el primer supergrupo de country de la historia, que realizó centenares de grabaciones y vendió millones de discos, revolucionando el concepto de la música popular. Muchas de sus canciones, desde Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? o Wildwood Flower a Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, han marcado e influenciado a generaciones enteras de músicos, desde Woody Guthrie a Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan y Johnny Cash (que acabó casándose con la famosa June Carter Cash). Un relato en movimiento que revela el ascenso de la familia al éxito, las luchas que tuvieron que librar a lo largo del camino y su impacto en la música contemporánea. Una historia de éxito y de fracaso, de riqueza y de pobreza, de racismo y de tolerancia, de creatividad y de negocios, en suma, del poder de la música y del amor.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2012
14 people are currently reading
555 people want to read
About the author
Frank M. Young
37 books7 followersFrank M. Young is an Eisner Award-winning writer/colorist and historian of comic arts. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 106 reviews
June 6, 2016
We now have around 90 years of recorded music – before 1925 it’s not that good, partly due to the poor songs ("Don’t Dilly Dally on the Way", "My Word you do Look Queer", "Ma He’s Making Eyes at Me") but mostly because they had to yell down a horn to record anything before 1925.
The way popular Anglo-American music evolved over the decades was fast. Genres were borned, fizzed awhile, then phoenixed into something newer. I see this as a spectacular collaboration between Scottish, Irish and English people, black American people and white American people – five distinct cultures (along with a jillion subcultures) colliding, stealing, joyfully re-stealing, enhancing, rewriting, improving and getting impatient with and changing around each other’s music.
Folk into hillbilly, string band, bluegrass, old timey, morphing into Nashville countrypolitan, and outlaw and newgrass, meantime race records, the original name, umbrella for gospel, jubilee quartet and country blues which citified and somewhere decades later anglified into blues rock and heavy metal – whilst at the same time race rechristened rhythm & blues became soul; jazz beginning with Dixieland getting fancier with swing and druggier with bebop, and god save us from free and fusion; black music doesn’t stand still for long, look at all the microgenres of dance music (hardcore handbag! Trip hop! Ambient frog! Terrorcore! Only one of those is made up!).
The Carter Family were like the bedrock laid down as a place to stand for all the other musicians to leap off of, like the Beatles of country music if the Beatles had been mostly women singing glum religious songs and laments about mothers dying in little log cabins and children in train wrecks and the United States Postal Service wrecking people’s lives by misdirecting mail. Don’t buy a ticket to ride from the Carter Family. It will end in tears. If they want to hold your hand it will be because they’re going to be hanged tomorrow and you’re their whitehaired mother who’s a thousand miles away. Their antique, starchy but for all that moving and lovely songs reached back into the previous century as AP Carter mostly stole them from Victorian songbooks.
I thought a graphic novelisation of this curious story would be a blast, and it kind of was, but there was one big pain in the neck which I must call attention to: phonetic speech. Like when you pick up Wuthering Heights for the first time and are confronted with the outrageous Nellie Dean :
‘“T’ maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath not o’ered, und t’ sound o’ t’ gospel still i’ yer lugs, and ye darr be laiking! Shame on ye! sit ye down, ill childer! there’s good books eneugh if ye’ll read ’em: sit ye down, and think o’ yer sowls!”
I imagine many a reader has dropped this classic like a rat mistaken for a chihuahua after a few pages of that. In this graphic novel we get :
Put thet out! It’s pyzen! It’ll roon y’r fine singin’ voice!
You ever flied in an airplane?
No, but I been on a motersickle.
‘S this all y’do when I’m not here? Just lollygag around pickin’ daisies?
Thing is, it kinda makes ‘em sound a bit like dim-witted-hillbillies, which no-one wanting to read this book wants to think like. Shore, it were a artistic decision, but I warn’t tickled pink ‘bout it, no sirree.
If you’re thinking of writing a novel, don’t do phonetic speech! It’s never good!
The Carter Family - they didn't smile much.
The way popular Anglo-American music evolved over the decades was fast. Genres were borned, fizzed awhile, then phoenixed into something newer. I see this as a spectacular collaboration between Scottish, Irish and English people, black American people and white American people – five distinct cultures (along with a jillion subcultures) colliding, stealing, joyfully re-stealing, enhancing, rewriting, improving and getting impatient with and changing around each other’s music.
Folk into hillbilly, string band, bluegrass, old timey, morphing into Nashville countrypolitan, and outlaw and newgrass, meantime race records, the original name, umbrella for gospel, jubilee quartet and country blues which citified and somewhere decades later anglified into blues rock and heavy metal – whilst at the same time race rechristened rhythm & blues became soul; jazz beginning with Dixieland getting fancier with swing and druggier with bebop, and god save us from free and fusion; black music doesn’t stand still for long, look at all the microgenres of dance music (hardcore handbag! Trip hop! Ambient frog! Terrorcore! Only one of those is made up!).
The Carter Family were like the bedrock laid down as a place to stand for all the other musicians to leap off of, like the Beatles of country music if the Beatles had been mostly women singing glum religious songs and laments about mothers dying in little log cabins and children in train wrecks and the United States Postal Service wrecking people’s lives by misdirecting mail. Don’t buy a ticket to ride from the Carter Family. It will end in tears. If they want to hold your hand it will be because they’re going to be hanged tomorrow and you’re their whitehaired mother who’s a thousand miles away. Their antique, starchy but for all that moving and lovely songs reached back into the previous century as AP Carter mostly stole them from Victorian songbooks.
I thought a graphic novelisation of this curious story would be a blast, and it kind of was, but there was one big pain in the neck which I must call attention to: phonetic speech. Like when you pick up Wuthering Heights for the first time and are confronted with the outrageous Nellie Dean :
‘“T’ maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath not o’ered, und t’ sound o’ t’ gospel still i’ yer lugs, and ye darr be laiking! Shame on ye! sit ye down, ill childer! there’s good books eneugh if ye’ll read ’em: sit ye down, and think o’ yer sowls!”
I imagine many a reader has dropped this classic like a rat mistaken for a chihuahua after a few pages of that. In this graphic novel we get :
Put thet out! It’s pyzen! It’ll roon y’r fine singin’ voice!
You ever flied in an airplane?
No, but I been on a motersickle.
‘S this all y’do when I’m not here? Just lollygag around pickin’ daisies?
Thing is, it kinda makes ‘em sound a bit like dim-witted-hillbillies, which no-one wanting to read this book wants to think like. Shore, it were a artistic decision, but I warn’t tickled pink ‘bout it, no sirree.
If you’re thinking of writing a novel, don’t do phonetic speech! It’s never good!
The Carter Family - they didn't smile much.
March 8, 2015
AP Carter, his wife Sarah and his cousin Maybelle make up the Carter Family, who were foundational in country music, bridging the nineteenth century period of English and Scottish ballads, which they played, to the Old Time country music they spread from the Appalachians across the country. Who cares? Well Mother Maybelle, whose invention of a kind of guitar strumming influenced country music for a long time, and who was the Grandame of Country Music for decades of musicians, was the mother of June Carter, with whom she also played with for many years. June Carter married Johnny Cash, who we all still care about today as a one who made country music popular. Talk about heritage, though eh?
Don't know this music? The book comes with a rare CD recording of the Carter Family that will get you interested, I think. The book is sort of a straightforward honest biography which has too much to tell in a graphic format so it feels a bit superficial, though it doesn't just narrate events, we see stuff happen, as opposed to most biographies, so I'll give them credit for that. I like the art, it's attractive and colorful and there's a section of four panel pages in black and white that tries for something different, but it is mainly trying to introduce us to their lives and careers so doesn't experiment very much with the telling. Most graph biographies, I have come to find, sort of suck. This one doesn't, but it is still not great, in my opinion. And I like old timer music and bluegrass and was pretty familiar with them and the music. This one is informed by archival research, other biographies, interviews, and is lovingly told, and a contribution to music history, attractively if not innovatively done. It's honest, not just deifying them. AP, for instance, comes off pretty much as a jerk throughout, though he was also tireless in arching great music he found all over the South.
Maybe 3.5 is more like it than the 3 I give it. And its more fun if you listen to he music as you read. All music biographies should include required listening, since it is obviously tough to get the heart of the work from just watching people play music in comic format… In this book you get a feel for music history, but you also get a feel for the South in a few deft moments over the space of a few decades.
Don't know this music? The book comes with a rare CD recording of the Carter Family that will get you interested, I think. The book is sort of a straightforward honest biography which has too much to tell in a graphic format so it feels a bit superficial, though it doesn't just narrate events, we see stuff happen, as opposed to most biographies, so I'll give them credit for that. I like the art, it's attractive and colorful and there's a section of four panel pages in black and white that tries for something different, but it is mainly trying to introduce us to their lives and careers so doesn't experiment very much with the telling. Most graph biographies, I have come to find, sort of suck. This one doesn't, but it is still not great, in my opinion. And I like old timer music and bluegrass and was pretty familiar with them and the music. This one is informed by archival research, other biographies, interviews, and is lovingly told, and a contribution to music history, attractively if not innovatively done. It's honest, not just deifying them. AP, for instance, comes off pretty much as a jerk throughout, though he was also tireless in arching great music he found all over the South.
Maybe 3.5 is more like it than the 3 I give it. And its more fun if you listen to he music as you read. All music biographies should include required listening, since it is obviously tough to get the heart of the work from just watching people play music in comic format… In this book you get a feel for music history, but you also get a feel for the South in a few deft moments over the space of a few decades.
November 13, 2013
Ok, I read this book for a book club. It was first of all, pretty great, well told, quietly dramatic, but ultimately (and hence the 3 stars) extremely dry. Like ... I think it probably captured the reality of the story it was telling but it was documentary to the point of dragging. I was all prepared to go to book club and sing its praises but in hindsight, it was just okay, and I would not have sought it out or been particularly intrigued by it. I would rather watch a PBS documentary on the Carters or listen to the recordings referenced in the book....yep. For Carters/old time country devotees and not for everybody.
February 12, 2013
This graphic novel deserves high praise. I guess my highest recommendation is that I stayed up until 1:30AM last night to finish reading this book. It tells the story of The Carter Family, focusing mostly, but by no means entirely, on AP Carter. The book reads almost like a modern passion play, including tales of innocence, love, betrayal, success, lonliness, racism, greed, and ultimately death, all anchored by the strength of family and love for music. One of the things I like most about the book is that it aptly describes all the characters' moral strengths and weaknesses. While the drawings are less than perfect (I constantly had trouble differentiating most of the people drawn) the drawings certainly add to the joy of the book. This book has a very high Fun Factor, on the same scale as driving a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee with a V-8 engine, listening to Bob Dylan play Honest With Me live with Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton on dual guitars, or playing with a Scottish Terrier puppy. Good stuff.
May 20, 2020
Excellent graphic novel biography of the Carter Family. A bit of focus on AP Carter, which was nice--his obsession resulted in their success, but at great cost to his family.
January 1, 2017
I read this sometime in the last year and will need to read it again before I can write a review. But I do remember enjoying it and learning quite a bit, so, for now I'll leave it at 4 stars.
September 5, 2020
This is a lovely book and possibly the best biographical comic I’ve read: mainly because Young and Lasky very obviously love the subject matter deeply but add to it this beautiful sense of melancholy and space. It’s a book where distances between people on the page speaks volumes, where body language is as much of a character as the people, where figures are setting off or returning from long journeys... it’s a book where the action seems to happen off the page as much as it does on it. The occasional playing with the format, when black and white comic strip pastiches turn up for example, helps enormously to balance the story out. And there’s a beautiful, minimalist fluidity to the art too. It’s a huge achievement and almost made me cry in a couple of places
April 23, 2019
What a gorgeous little book. I want to read a graphic novel about all my favorite music artists. I love the panels with Sara and A.P. singing that would turn into roses; the way A.P.'s heartbreak was depicted; the apple tree.
February 12, 2017
While it's a very interesting biography on the Carter Family, I feel that it suffers from a lack of actually showing their impact on music. What about the 50s, 60s, 70s? This just ends and it's over. Even just a timeline of later events would have shown the scope. As it is it feels like a story of musicians who might have been regionally popular but didn't have a big following. Which could be farther from the truth. Also the artist isn't good and distinguishing between characters and don't get me started on how badly he draws children. I did like the inclusion of a CD of their music. That was a nice touch.
October 20, 2012
A wonderfully charming and informative biography of an American family and their undeniably capital-A American story: their modest origins, their rise to greatness, flirtations with the dangers of business and profiteering, their struggles to maintain a family, and their heartbreaking downfall. Young and Lasky have perfected the art of graphic history, but not just because they have few great contemporaries to be found. Young's capturing of the old Virginian drawl coupled with Lasky's simple and bold illustrations make for a memorable history lesson that isn't too flashy in narrative or overly full of conjecture. They just show and tell us what is known about the Carters, and the result is effortlessly entertaining. The book itself is a marvel to hold in your hands, and to listen to the accompanying tunes while reading along is an experience that any music lover, history buff, or comic reader savor.
June 18, 2013
I was very sorry indeed when I finished this book, I wanted it to keep going! A compelling and amazing story of one of America's greatest music acts. The characters come alive on the pages. The classic composition of the artwork harkens of Lil Orphan Annie, The Yellow Kid, Gasoline Alley, and other newspaper comics of the time. The old-timey feel to the linework and text, as well as the choice of colors, helped to create the time warp I took back to the 1920s, where I avidly followed the Carter Family's heartbreaking, inspiring, and mind blowing exploits and exploitations, as they climb the ladder of fame by any means necessary.
June 17, 2013
The Carter's story is so compelling and tragic that it is hard to imagine a book that could fail to be interesting so long as it stuck to the story. Fortunately Young has done more than that, and the episodic approach that he takes to their lives meshes well with the fits and starts of their career. The CD is nothing special, a collection of 1939 XERA broadcasts that includes a few of the older hits alongside a few of the new ones from that year. It supports the book which is it's intended purpose.
July 9, 2013
Anyone not named Frank M. Young or David Lasky should just ask for their GN's back from the Eisner comitee.
I have always been a fan of the band the Carter Family but, shy of June knew little about them.
If you want to experiencee how wonderful and dreadful the South was in the 20's through the 40's this may be as close as you will ever get.
The storytelling is down home but always wildly inventive. Just a joy to read even when thing got a bit dire and depressing.
I have always been a fan of the band the Carter Family but, shy of June knew little about them.
If you want to experiencee how wonderful and dreadful the South was in the 20's through the 40's this may be as close as you will ever get.
The storytelling is down home but always wildly inventive. Just a joy to read even when thing got a bit dire and depressing.
February 12, 2016
This is just a fantastic book, really! And for some reason, the graphic novel format just matches up perfectly with the story that it tells. I am not particularly a fan of the Carter Family or their style of music, but I loved this book all the same.
January 6, 2013
I've been waiting years for this book. It didn't disappoint.
February 17, 2013
Can't recommend this highly enough.
February 27, 2013
Hell yeah! Quiet story about quiet people. Beautiful music.
August 26, 2013
This is fantastic.
January 3, 2016
A very cool history of the Carter Family focusing on their "glory" years from the late 1920s to the '40s, written in graphic novel format.
October 24, 2017
Me sorprende que no tenga una puntuación más alta. La Familia Carter es poco conocida en España y siempre que la he oído mencionar ha sido en Melodías Pizarras o en Mondo Brutto. Este comic narra una parte de su historia mostrándola como un mundo pequeño, casi de fantasía, en la que unas personas crean sin saberlo, y sin darle importancia, una leyenda. Ellos están más preocupados por coner mañana, por llevar a los hijos al colegio, o por arreglar el coche. La sencillez de los personajes y su humanidad hace que les cojas cariño a todos muy rápidamente. La narración, sin épica ni florituras, es tan sencilla y contundente como la propia música de los Carter. Deja de lado el carácter claramente conservador y religioso de la familia, supongo que a propósito. Pero dibuja algunas de las anécdotas más bonitas y conocidas de su trayectoria. Sólo queda que los nuevos lectores se acerquen a su música. Ya no hay músicos así. De verdad. Ya no los hay.
November 17, 2022
Loved the art - an understated, quiet style that built up to blowing your mind with one perfect panel here and there.
I wish we'd seen a little more of what was happening around the Carters, like other artists within their sphere of influence? The prologue (and music history in general) tells us they were an extremely big deal for the country genre and folk music overall, but the actual narrative in here is pretty tightly focused on A.P. and Sara. (I can't help feeling like Maybelle, who was maybe less of a driving force than A.P. but probably the most influential / inventive of the group, would have been a more interesting focal point!)
A truly impressive effort to condense a ton of research into a tight narrative. There's a ton of information between the lines and it comes across smoothly, so definitely a tribute to how well comics work as a medium for this kind of story.
I wish we'd seen a little more of what was happening around the Carters, like other artists within their sphere of influence? The prologue (and music history in general) tells us they were an extremely big deal for the country genre and folk music overall, but the actual narrative in here is pretty tightly focused on A.P. and Sara. (I can't help feeling like Maybelle, who was maybe less of a driving force than A.P. but probably the most influential / inventive of the group, would have been a more interesting focal point!)
A truly impressive effort to condense a ton of research into a tight narrative. There's a ton of information between the lines and it comes across smoothly, so definitely a tribute to how well comics work as a medium for this kind of story.
May 9, 2022
The lovely illustrations and beautiful, cozy color palette make this book a standout. As an overview of the Carter Family and the individual member's lives, the book does a good job of covering the main events and giving a feel for a timeline. With the broad scope, there are certainly things that end up left out, but the main points are all present and made more memorable through the illustrations.
The creators made a point to write in the vocabulary and dialect of the time and region the story took place which lends a feeling of authenticity. Most of the narrative is driven through dialogue, which is effective in this graphic novel format.
It's a great book for country fans and could be an introduction for tweens and teens as well, though it is probably a bit difficult for younger children who may enjoy the illustrations nonetheless.
The creators made a point to write in the vocabulary and dialect of the time and region the story took place which lends a feeling of authenticity. Most of the narrative is driven through dialogue, which is effective in this graphic novel format.
It's a great book for country fans and could be an introduction for tweens and teens as well, though it is probably a bit difficult for younger children who may enjoy the illustrations nonetheless.
April 19, 2021
Don't Forget This Song is the story of the Carter Family 0 the first family of country music who became superstars during the Great Depression. This book is a wonderful human-interest story that is a charming tale of how the Carter Family formed, morphed, and influenced the likes of Johnny Cash (who actually married into the family). It's a story of success and failure, poverty, wealth and the enduring power of music. The graphic novel format works well for this type of story and David Lasky's illustrations are simplistic, direct, and rustic, the perfect style for the subjects he is depicting.
January 4, 2020
Esta novela gráfica narra los años clave de la carrera artística del matrimonio Pleasant y Sarah Carter, así como su prima Maybelle, en la que grabaron sus discos para RCA Victor y sus actuaciones por la radio, así como parte de la evolución de sus hijos e hijas en el mundo de la música.
Me encanta el dibujo y la organización por capítulos en los que, usando la creación o grabación de una canción, cuenta con todo detalle un acontecimiento de la familia.
Viene acompañado de una playlist de Spotify con los temas del libro maravillosa.
Me encanta el dibujo y la organización por capítulos en los que, usando la creación o grabación de una canción, cuenta con todo detalle un acontecimiento de la familia.
Viene acompañado de una playlist de Spotify con los temas del libro maravillosa.
March 2, 2018
http://mariesbookgarden.blogspot.com/...
Told in graphic novel style, The Carter Family tells the story of how this country's Americana grandmothers and grandfathers got their start in music. I enjoyed reading about the history of this talented musical family.
Told in graphic novel style, The Carter Family tells the story of how this country's Americana grandmothers and grandfathers got their start in music. I enjoyed reading about the history of this talented musical family.
March 24, 2018
This book is written like a Comic Book strip which somehow I didn't realize until after I had purchased the book. I was worried this might drive me crazy but once I started reading it I really enjoyed the format. If you are interested in music history or the Carter family I would highly recommend this book. The only negative is that the print is small so get out your reading glasses.
October 19, 2020
It was an informative book, maybe a good introduction into the Carter family that kept things simple and told a narrative that sounded part-true, part-folk tale. There are lots of unanswered questions, such as what happened to AP for taking credit for writing the songs he was collecting and why they were so poor even after becoming famous but kept the producer who was ripping them off.
July 26, 2021
Centré sur la figure paternelle de A. P. Carter, ce qui m'a laissé un peu sur ma faim vis-à-vis surtout du travail musical de Maybelle puis de ses filles. Un travail peut-être un peu trop hagiographique et littéral par endroit qui ne fait qu'effleurer les parts d'ombre de leur succès mais un vrai régal pour les fans dans tous les cas.
March 3, 2020
Muy bueno aunque me he dejado los ojos con esa letra tan pequeña.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 106 reviews