Anchored In Love: An Intimate Portrait of June Carter Cash

by John Carter Cash Narrated by Webb Wilder

Overview

June Carter was born in the rugged mountains of Maces Springs, Virginia, to Ezra and Maybelle Carter, pioneers of country music. On stage from a very young age, June found her niche in the spotlight with her vivacious personality and down-home sense of humor. Her confidence and spirit were what attracted Johnny Cash to her in the late 1950s. On the road together, they quickly bonded. June was his helpmate and closest companion. They were married for forty years, through addiction and success, tragedy and triumph.
Anchored in Love is an inside look into the life of June Carter Cash, through the eyes of her only child with Johnny Cash-John Carter Cash. With skillful prose, he reveals new information about the legendary woman through his tender memories and heartwarming stories.

Editorial Reviews

June Carter Cash (1923-2003) was born into music. At 10, she became a member of the famed Carter Family country music group; by the time she was 16, she was already a radio personality. Married three times, she finally met Johnny Cash (1932-2003), the love of her life, in 1956. They wed 12 years later and remained together, despite deep torment, until his death. This biography of June by their son John Carter Cash presents this extraordinary woman even more intimately than did the 2005 biopic Walk the Line.

Publishers Weekly

The only son of country legends Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash pens a heartfelt narrative of his mother's life that nicely combines biography, autobiography and inspirational guidebook into a fitting tribute to a woman whose life and career embodied modern country music. Musician and producer Cash spends the first half of his book reviewing his mom's early days performing with the legendary Carter Family in 1939, and her later marriage to Johnny Cash. This story has been notably told before in June's two autobiographies and Mark Zwonitzer's definitive Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?, which Cash dutifully cites, while adding some fascinating stories, such as a possible more-than-flirtation with the young Elvis Presley and various aspects of Johnny and June's courtship that he feels "the film Walk the Linelacked." But the book really begins to soar in its second half. Cash unflinchingly details the addictions that beset himself and many of his sisters-as well as June and Johnny's addictions late in their lives-while lovingly showing how throughout this time, and until her death in 2003, June's "unshakable" religious faith infused her life and helped inspire her children to continue the legacy of "her family's music and its strong work ethic." (June)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Product Details

BN ID:	2940179011910
Publisher:	Nelson, Thomas, Inc.
Publication date:	12/15/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Anchored in Love

An Intimate Portrait of June Carter Cash

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By John Carter Cash

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2007 John Carter Cash
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8499-0187-4

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Chapter One

The Music of the Mountains

Just a village and a homestead on the farm, A mother's love to shield you from all harm, A mother's love so true, and a sweetheart brave and true, A village and a homestead on the farm. - A. P. CARTER "Homestead on the Farm" Recorded by the Original Carter Family November 22-24, 1929

Mom and I were sitting on the porch of the Virginia house. She was talking, and mostly I was just listening, an arrangement that was quite common in our relationship. She always had a lot to say. I was in my late teens and was eager to leave and go squirrel hunting with my cousin Shane. But Mom held me there a little while longer. She had another story to tell me.

"Your Grandfather Ezra was the first to bring electric power to this valley," she began ...

Ezra Carter, also known as Eck, or Pop, was a descendant of some of the earliest and most fiercely independent settlers in Poor Valley, a little community at the foot of Clinch Mountain. He had grownup with four brothers and three sisters (another child died young) in a one-room cabin some two miles away from where Mom and I sat on the porch that day. In 1926 he married Maybelle Addington, a petite, sixteen-year-old beauty he'd met a few months earlier when she came from her home on the other side of the mountain to visit her first cousin, Sara Dougherty Carter. Like Ezra, Maybelle was descended from a long line of intrepid mountain folk, including a Revolutionary War veteran who settled in Virginia in 1773. Mom always liked to remind me that one of Grandma Maybelle's ancestors, Henry Addington, had been the prime minister of England.

For a while the newlyweds lived with Ezra's parents, Robert and Mollie Bays Carter, and their younger children in the Carters' tiny cabin. A short while later, Ezra built a slightly larger home nearby for him and Maybelle to move into. But their privacy didn't last long before his parents moved out of their old, weathered cabin and into the new house with Ezra and Maybelle. Although Ezra and Maybelle undoubtedly needed their privacy, love and unity of family were most important. I don't remember ever hearing about anyone disliking the arrangement.

Mom had often described my great-grandmother, Mollie Bays Carter, as a strong and vivacious character, a tough mountain lady with leathered hands and burdened back. She was an enthusiastic singer of songs; Mom used to say on Sundays you could hear Grandma Mollie singing a half mile away from the church, drowning out all the other voices. Mollie loved to dance; she could "cut a rug" dancing a jig. And she had an intense faith in God.

She was also a midwife who attended the home births of many of her own grandchildren, including Helen, Maybelle and Ezra's first child, born September 19, 1927.

It was the custom in those days for people to share music both at home with their families and in community "conventions," "schools," and performances. Sometimes while they visited on each other's porches someone would pull out a fiddle or a banjo and sing for friends and neighbors. Other times music lovers scheduled singing meetings or held special events in schoolhouses and other community centers. Sometimes a hat might be passed to collect donations for the performers' benefit; other times a token fee was charged at the door. Music was a strong, beautiful thread that tied the people of the mountains to their traditions, history, and folklore. Not everyone in the mountains had a gift for making music, but almost everyone had a love for hearing it.

Eleven years before Ezra and Maybelle were married, Maybelle's cousin Sara Dougherty had married Ezra's older brother, Alvin Pleasant Carter (known as A.P. or Doc). Sara had a beautiful voice and could play the autoharp, the guitar, and the banjo. A.P. was a jittery man who could never sit still. Mollie Carter had been pregnant with A.P. and was standing under a tree when it was struck by lightning; she always blamed her son's constant, lifelong fidgeting and shaking on that prenatal incident.

During their brief marriage, Sara and A.P. had discovered that folks were willing to pay a little money to hear Sara sing. And when she occasionally performed with her cousin Maybelle, who had a unique style of guitar playing, picking out the melody and strumming the rhythm simultaneously, the resulting music was something people remembered and talked about. Occasionally, A.P. jumped in to join them with his inimitable bass vocals.

In the summer of 1927, A.P. noticed an ad in the Bristol, Tennessee, newspaper announcing that the Victor Company was bringing a recording machine to town for a few days. A.P. was excited to learn that the record company's agent would pay an amazing fifty dollars for every song deemed worthy of recording.

By then Sara was the mother of three-eight-year-old Gladys, five-year-old Janette, and infant Joe-and Maybelle was eight and a half months pregnant with Helen. In an interview before she died in 2006, Janette told me about that day in 1927 when the carload of Carters set off without her to audition for the recording company in Bristol.

"The car was full," she said. "It was Mommy and Maybelle and Daddy and Gladys-she went to tend to Joe. I still remember standin' at that gate, a-screamin' and a-cryin' why they couldn't take me.

"Daddy said to Mommy, 'What is wrong with that young'n? She's ascreamin' and a-cryin'. Why are you leavin' her here? Take her. You're takin' the rest.'

"And Mommy said, 'No, there just ain't room for us all.' And they left me. I've never forgot them a-runnin' off and leavin' me and takin' the others," Janette said.

It took A.P. all day to drive Ezra's borrowed, jam-packed car over the sweltering, twenty-five miles of unpaved roads from the Carters' homes at Maces Springs, near Hiltons, to Bristol. There, in a makeshift studio, the three of them performed for Victor agent Ralph Peer, who ended up recording six of their songs and paying them three hundred dollars.

They went back home to Maces Springs and heard nary a word about their recordings-until several months later when Ezra and Maybelle happened to be in town and heard what turned out to be the Carter Family's first phonograph record being played over a store's loudspeaker.

The outside world was beginning to hear the music that had wafted through the Appalachian Mountains for generations, the same ballads and hymns and whimsical verses that had filled the Carters' homes daily.

In addition to remarkable musical talent, there also was great humor and laughter in the Carter clan. According to Janette, her mother, Sara, was quite a prankster. Sara's most famous escapade occurred one day when Maybelle had put her new baby to sleep and had gone outside to get water from the well just a few yards from the door. While Maybelle was away, Sara sneaked in and took the baby, cradle and all, and hid the quiet, slumbering child high in the closet. Maybelle returned, found the child missing, and according to Janette, "fainted dead away."

She was hurriedly revived to the sound of Sara's mischievous laughter. With rascally delight, Sara lowered the cradle into Maybelle's arms as the distraught young mother, still a teenager at that point, furiously and tearfully admonished Sara. It may have been upsetting at the time, but this kind of family humor and teasing were common among the Carters. A love of laughter and comedy would later become most obvious in the spirit of Eck and Maybelle's fun-loving middle child, June.

The first songs recorded by A.P., Sara, and my Grandma Maybelle were well received, and soon the three began recording more music under contract with Victor. Maybelle was recognized as the most talented guitar player in the family, while Sara had the strongest voice and played the autoharp as they sang. In the fall of 1928, Maybelle became pregnant once again, and the baby within her must have heard the steady rhythm of the guitar daily, must have been attuned to the sound of Appalachian music coursing through her bones and muscle from her earliest moments. With her Grandma Mollie serving as midwife, Valerie June Carter was born on June 23, 1929, in Maces Springs, Virginia, into what would become known as the First Family of Country Music.

Grandma Maybelle was a devoted mother, but she had trouble producing enough breast milk for baby June, perhaps because by that time she had to travel frequently to perform and record with A.P. and Sara. As a result, June spent quite a bit of time at the bosom of her Aunt Ora, the wife of Eck's brother Ermine Carter. At the other breast was June's first cousin Fern. This was common practice in those days, since there were no supermarkets or baby formula.

Recently Fern recalled a memory her mother often shared about how that came to happen: "When June and I were both little babies, Mama said to Aunt Maybelle one day, 'That child don't look like she's gettin' enough milk.' And Aunt Maybelle said, 'I don't think she is.' Mama said, 'Well, just let me nurse her too.' See, Mama was nursing me, and she had so much milk she couldn't handle it all. So she nursed June and me both, and she kept June a lot when Maybelle was working." The close bond that began between June and Fern as infants would last a lifetime.

By 1929, the Carter Family-A.P., Sara, and Maybelle-were becoming increasingly popular and traveling around the country performing their music. When they came home from their travels, A.P. would leave again for weeks at a time, usually traveling alone, searching the hills for folks to visit and songs to record.

By 1933, when their third daughter, Anita, was born, Ezra and Maybelle had moved into a large home just over the hill from Mollie and Robert. It was on the porch of this house where Mom and I were sitting that day. Mom's Virginia childhood home was a place we visited as often as we could.

To us, it has always felt like sacred ground.

Mom described Grandpa Eck as a resourceful, deep-thinking man who loved tinkering and working with his hands. He always saw intriguing possibilities where others saw difficulties. He supported and believed in Maybelle's music and her amazing ability to play her guitar, but he had his own career, and as Mom liked to point out, he was an important man in the valley. He worked as a railroad postal agent, collecting, sorting, and delivering the mail along the train route from Bristol to Washington, DC.

His job either required or allowed him (I'm not sure which) to carry a gun. He was exceedingly intelligent, able to memorize hundreds of postal codes, addresses, and routes, and he was also inventive when it came to ways to spread his paycheck around the valley. He hired others to work for him at assorted projects and jobs, some of which may have seemed a bit outlandish at the time. His three daughters grew up watching him help his neighbors and share his blessings, and they learned to do the same.

Eck loved to read, and apparently he was inspired by what he read about the latest developments with electricity. He even dammed up the little creek that ran alongside their house and somehow put together a contraption that could generate electricity to light up their nine-room residence. That's how the Carter home became the first to have electricity in Poor Valley. But it wasn't enough. Eck wanted more.

Just more than a mile from Maybelle and Ezra's home, as the crow flies, the Holston River runs, strong and constant. Between the house and river, however, there are two quite tall, mountainous ridges, or "knobs," as they're known in that area. Others might have seen the rugged landscape as an impediment between them and the river. Grandpa Ezra, a man of vision, saw possibility.

Unbelievably, he built a dam across the Holston River and constructed a large turbine to generate electricity. Then he ran a line from the turbine over the knobs to his home (and apparently to a couple of neighbors' homes too). Before long, the power company in Bristol bought him out, and soon electricity was available to a wider area. But it was Grandpa Eck who first brought it to the valley. That's the story Mom told me that afternoon as we sat on the porch.

I really can't remember how our time together ended that day. Maybe I was impatient to get into the woods, standing and pacing as Mom neared the end of the story. Maybe I stayed longer, enjoying getting to spend some quiet time with her. Either way, as I think back on that long-ago afternoon, I can feel the peace of that quiet homeplace embracing me once more. Things were different there. They still are. And we are different when we are there.

June Carter left the Poor Valley at a young age to travel the world. Yet somehow it stayed within her throughout her life, whether she was performing before thousands on the other side of the globe or talking with the girl at the grocery-store checkout ... whether she was dining with the president and first lady in the White House or having dinner with her cousin Joe Carter back in Maces Springs ... whether she was flying in a little Cessna 180 over the Alaskan wilderness or entertaining the troops in a war zone or meeting the U.S. ambassador in Poland ... wherever she was, whatever she was doing, she was, at heart, the same endearing, simple mountain girl she'd always been. Her first cousin Ester Moore said June was "always happy, always full of herself. It seemed like everyone wanted to be around her."

She was kind and generous, humorous and excitable, loyal and strong. One of her friends, Lisa Kristofferson, would say about her later, "June was a bright, sparkling star ... universal love made incarnate in a pretty, talented, frisky package."

This girl from Poor Valley would change in many ways after she left the mountains and went on to what some would describe as great success. But her heart, her character, remained unchanged. Throughout her life she would try and succeed, try and fail, try again. She would enjoy success while enduring great heartache and greater loss. And through it all, she never lost her identity as a simple, God-fearing child of the mountains. She knew no other way.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Anchored in Love by John Carter Cash Copyright © 2007 by John Carter Cash . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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