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I'll Never Forsake You

  • I'll Never Forsake You

    By 1938, the Carters were nationally famous recording artists, but we still playing quarter-a head schoolhouse shows around home. Then their first serious moneymaking opportunity came along: a patent medicine company offered to sponsor them on Dr. J. Romulus Brinkley's notorious border radio station XERA, with studios in Del Rio, Texas, and transmitter over the border in Mexico, operating at ten times the legal limit in the States. As Maybelle's daughter June said, "you could hang a tin can on a barbed-wire fence anywhere in Texas and hear the Carter Family". With a real radio you could catch them clear up in Canada. So they packed up the car the sponsor gave them, tied Maybelle's motorcycle to the roof, and drove from Virginia to Texas, playing there all winter and taking the summers off, Maybelle, always the most inventive of the family, started listening to some of the local Mexican musicians, and wrote this song in her own version of their style.

    The Carter Family: Maybelle Carter, lead vocal, guitar; Sara Carter, harmony vocal, autoharp.

    Chicago IL 10/4/40 Conqueror 9569

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