When she started on the coffeehouse circuit, June picked up the guitar part from the Carter Family version. "The feeling of being in a circle of friends, of family members, of being in a circle that involves ancestors, asking that that never be broken, that we continue these cycles, that we continue to build on generation after generation, is just a beautiful thought to me," June reflects. Valerie June, a singer and songwriter who broke through in the roots scene early this decade, says she and her family lifted their voices to sing "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" a cappella while visiting her grandmother's Church of Christ congregation. That pattern is still playing out for musicians of a younger generation. By the time the band made its third Circle album in 2002, the tables had turned: Its members were now the veterans welcoming the contributions of newcomers. "Ĭollaborating with country elders helped pave the way for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band to eventually cross over to the country format itself. Hearing folks tell us stories like, 'I hadn't talked to my dad in years, and we sat down and this record became a bonding point for us'? That's deep stuff. There was a lot of these sides that just did not trust each other. "The war was raging in Vietnam right then," he recalls, "and there was a lot of peace marches going on - the hippies versus the rednecks. Hanna says he met listeners everywhere who responded to the way the musical collaboration bridged generation gaps. But on the title track, Mother Maybelle Carter, Jimmy Martin and Roy Acuff each sang a verse and everyone else joined them for the chorus. The Dirt Band and its guests rambled through more than three dozen standards, most with one vocalist or another designated as lead singer. "It was as much about just getting to hang out with these folks as it was making music with 'em," founding member Jeff Hanna says. In the early 1970s, the song gave the California country-rockers in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band a way to bond with their old-time, country and bluegrass idols when they convened in the studio to record what would become the appropriately titled landmark album Will the Circle Be Unbroken. That connection to lineage has touched those outside the Carter bloodline too. Being older and having gone through the loss of my mother and my grandma, I feel closer to my people and to my legacy of family when I sing that song." "It was a celebration to me then - I had not experienced loss in the way that that song actually is about. than it did when I first learned it and first sang it live in front of an audience," Carter says. It was her mother June Carter Cash's wish that her loved ones sing it when they laid her to rest, and Carlene often finds herself feeling reflective when she revisits the song these days. She's sung "Circle Be," as she calls it, countless times over the years-with family, friends and musical peers. But it's always during the chorus of 'Will the Circle Be Unbroken.' I've seen everybody in my family has come up doing that."
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We don't know how to hold a mic or anything. "When us Carter girls start out," Carlene explains, "usually we get thrown on stage without any prep. Mother Maybelle passed it down to her daughters Anita, Helen and June and June's daughter Carlene Carter grew up watching them practice at home and perform for audiences until the time came for her initiation. In the decades to come, as the music industry grew to include new generations of performers, so did the Carter Family - and the song "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," as it became known, stayed in the repertoire. The famed circle on the Grand Ole Opry House stage is a piece of wood cut from the floor of the Ryman Auditorium, the Opry's previous home.
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