In the rural South of the 1930s, a woman divorced her husband, kept touring with him for years, and then married his first cousin. She was not a rock star. She was Sara Carter, frontwoman of the original Carter Family and an architect of traditional American country music. This deep dive explores how a woman born in 1898 in Copper Creek, Virginia, helped launch a commercial industry while defying the social rules of her era.

We revisit the 1927 Bristol Sessions, her driving percussive autoharp paired with Maybelle’s revolutionary guitar, and the deep alto voice that emerged as recording technology evolved. We look at how she found songs like Fifty Miles of Elbow Room in a Seventh-day Adventist church, the ethics of claiming copyright on public domain hymns, her 1936 divorce from A.P. Carter, and her 1960s folk revival second act at the Newport Folk Festival.

• Marrying A.P. Carter at 16 in 1915 and raising Gladys, Janette and Joe
• Original songs including My Foothills Home, The Dying Soldier and Railroading on the Great Divide
• Marrying Coy Bayes and moving to California in 1943, ending the original trio
• Annual cross-country trailer trips back to Virginia to perform with Maybelle at the A.P. Carter Memorial Festival
• Country Music Hall of Fame induction in 1970 and a U.S. postage stamp in 1993