When you picture a lead guitarist, you probably do not imagine a teenage girl in 1920s rural Appalachia. Yet that is where the guitar was first pushed from the rhythm section to the front of the stage. This deep dive looks past the matronly nickname Mother Maybelle to reveal a relentless innovator: born Maybelle Addington in Nickelsville, Virginia, in 1909, she studied guitar from age 13, married Ezra Carter in 1926, and in 1927 formed the original Carter Family with A.P. and Sara Carter just as record scouts hauled portable recording machines into the mountains.

We break down the mechanics of the Carter Scratch, the thumb-led style that let her play melody on the bass strings while brushing rhythm on the treble strings, along with the reverse picking she learned from Leslie Riddle, her flat-picking and slide techniques, and the 1932 session where she mimicked an ailing Jimmie Rodgers’ style. The episode then follows her second act with the Carter Sisters, her reinvention of the autoharp, her years on Johnny Cash’s television show, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken, her 1970 Country Music Hall of Fame induction, and her ranking as the 17th greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone in 2023.

• How 1920s record labels brought recording equipment to Appalachia and made the Carter Family stars
• The Carter Scratch explained: one hand playing bass melody and treble rhythm at once
• Flipping the autoharp upside down to reach a shared microphone, and how manufacturers redesigned the instrument
• Influence on Floyd Cramer’s slip-note piano and the Nashville sound
• Bridging the 1960s folk revival and 1970s folk rock, including her first gold record in her sixties