Guitar Styles of the Carter Family
by Mike Seeger with Janette Carter
Homespun Video VD-SEG-CF01/HL00641470 (2000); 85 min; $29.95

Mike Seeger has spent his life collecting, documenting, and playing traditional mountain music of the American south. Through performances (with the New Lost City Ramblers and others), documentaries, recordings, and special projects, Seeger has celebrated this music and the people who made it. This documentation has included the legacy of the Carter Family. Seeger toured with Maybelle Carter on occasion in the 1960s and early 1970s, so he is especially well-placed to present this overview of Carter Family guitar styles. He is assisted in this task by Janette Carter, the daughter of A.P. and Sara Carter, who has a central role on the videotape. Since the mid-1970s, she has been keeping the Carter Family music alive through performances at the Carter Fold, a concert barn in Maces Springs, Virginia. Throughout the video, Seeger interviews Janette about the Carter Family and their legacy.

The video begins with a short instrumental ("Sunny Side of Life") and then a brief lecture on the importance of the Carter Family in American musical history. While their recording career spanned only 14 years (1927-1941), their influence continues to this day. From southwestern Virginia, the Carter Family played the local music, adding some distinctive styles, and ending up as one of the taproots of American country music. Alvin Pleasant Carter collected songs and sang lead and high bass. His wife, Sara Dougherty Carter, sang lead and also played autoharp and rhythm guitar. Maybelle Addington Carter (Sara's younger cousin) was the most noted instrumentalist of the trio, and she sang a high harmony. Most of the video is focused on the styles of Maybelle Carter, who created the guitar sounds (while still in her late teens) that are most closely associated with the Carter Family. While all original members were instrumentalists, on recordings they generally used a guitar and autoharp combination (which is what is used for much of this video).

Maybelle Carter usually played in the key of C (although she used a capo and tuned her strings down at times). One of her distinctive styles was to play the melody in the bass strings and then strum in between with a brushing of the first two fingers (or some combination thereof). Seeger teaches four of the distinctive approaches of Carter, beginning with this "thumb lead style" using the song "Jimmy Brown the Newsboy." He also uses "Wildwood Flower" to teach this "thumb lead" style, first singing and playing the song through, and then going over it line by line (with split screen to show both hands at work). Seeger also shows the differences between two of Carter's versions of "Wildwood Flower," one from 1928 and one from the 1930s.

Seeger uses "Little Darling Pal of Mine" to show the Hawaiian style of Carter's playing. This uses a slide, with the guitar in D-tuning (DADF#AD). Again, there is line-by-line instruction of the piece. The third style is the country blues style, taught through the song "Cannonball Blues." This uses an alternating bass with the melody in the treble strings. Seeger illustrates Carter's different versions of this song from different time periods. The fourth style is flatpicking, which was not used a lot by Carter. It was a local style, though, and she showed that she could adapt it. This one requires guitar backup, as it is largely a lead style, and Seeger and Janette Carter do a version of "You are my Flower" as a teaching aid.

In the last section of the video, Seeger discusses the guitar styles of both Sara and A.P. Carter. Janette Carter plays a song ("Pretty Polly") that illustrates Sara's strumming style, and Seeger plays "I Never Will Marry" in the style that A.P. Carter used. The video is enriched by the comfortable, easy dialogue between Seeger and Carter. Tablature is included, but it is suggested that it be used only if necessary; rather, one should listen to the original recordings to get the feel, and learn to play it by ear if at all possible.
One important effect of the video is to make people aware of the variety of guitar styles which the Carter Family used. Guitar Styles of the Carter Family is not only an instructional video; it is also a piece of musical ethnography. — Ivan Emke (Corner Brook, NF, Canada)

Innovative Arrangements for American Blues/Roots Guitar
by Geoff Muldaur
Homespun VD-GEO-GT01 (2000); 85 min.

Geoff Muldaur's résumé reads like a who's who of roots music, from his stint in the Jim Kweskin Jug Band to his current successful solo career. In his instructional video, Muldaur covers a huge number of musical bases, teaching the traditional gospel tune "Just a Little While to Stay Here," the Delta blues "Wild Ox Moan," Blind Willie Johnson's "Tears Go Rolling Down," and several Muldaur originals. In somewhat of a departure for the Homespun series, the instruction takes the form of a dialog between Muldaur and Homespun founder Happy Traum; their repartee draws on both musicians' encyclopedic knowledge of the acoustic guitar. Muldaur is a clear and articulate teacher, and the video uses split screen technology to good effect.
— Michael Parrish (Downers Grove, IL)