A country music group that performed and recorded between 1927 and 1943. Their music had a profound impact on bluegrass, country, southern gospel, pop and rock musicians, as well as on the US folk revival of the 1960s.

The original group consisted of Alvin Pleasant (A.P.) Delaney Carter, his wife Sara Dougherty Carter and his sister-in-law Maybelle Addington Carter. Maybelle was married to A.P.'s brother Ezra (Eck) Carter and was also Sara's first cousin. All three were born and raised in southwestern Virginia where they were immersed in the tight harmonies of mountain gospel music and shape note singing. Maybelle's distinctive and innovative guitar playing style became a hallmark of the group.

The Carters got their start in July 1927, when A.P. convinced Sara and Maybelle (pregnant at the time) to make the journey from Maces Springs, Virginia, to Bristol, Tennessee, to audition for record producer Ralph Peer who was seeking new talent for the relatively embryonic recording industry.

In the fall of 1927, the Victor recording company released a double-sided 78 rpm record of the group performing Wandering Boy and Poor Orphan Child. In 1928, another record was released with The Storms Are on the Ocean and Single Girl, Married Girl. This record became very popular.

In May 1928, Peer had the group travel to Camden, New Jersey, where they recorded many of what would become their signature songs, including Keep on the Sunny Side and Wildwood Flower. The group did not receive any money for this effort and left with a contract that assured a small royalty for sales of their records and sheet music. During a February 1929 session they recorded a further set of songs, including My Clinch Mountain Home.

By the end of 1930, they had sold 300,000 records in the USA. Realising that he would benefit financially with each new song he collected and copyrighted, A.P. travelled around the southwestern Virginia area in search of new songs.

In the early 1930s, he befriended Lesley 'Esley' Riddle, a black guitar player from Kingsport, Tennessee, who accompanied him on his song collecting trips. Riddle's blues guitar playing style influenced the Carters, especially Maybelle who learned new guitar techniques from watching him play.

In June 1931, the Carters did a recording session in Nashville, Tennessee along with country legend, Jimmie Rodgers.

In 1933, Maybelle met The Cook Family Singers at the Worlds Fair in Chicago and fell in love with their signature sound. She asked them to tour with the Carter Family.

In the winter of 1938-1939, the Carter Family travelled to Texas, where they had a twice-daily programme on a radio station across the border in Mexico.

In the 1939-1940 season, June Carter (middle daughter of Ezra and Maybelle) joined the group, which was now in San Antonio, Texas, where the programmes were pre-recorded and distributed to multiple border radio stations.

In the fall of 1942, the Carters moved their programme to Charlotte, North Carolina for a one-year contract.

By 1943, A.P. and Sara's marriage had dissolved; she married his cousin and moved to California and the group disbanded.

Maybelle continued to perform with her daughters Anita, June, and Helen as Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters into the 1960s. A.P., Sara and their children, Joe and Janette, recorded some material in the 1950s.

Maybelle and Sara briefly reunited and toured in the 1960s, during the height of folk music's popularity. In 1987, reunited sisters June Carter Cash, Helen and Anita Carter, along with June's daughter, Carlene Carter, appeared as The Carter Family.

During the 1960s, revivalist folksingers such as Joan Baez performed much of the material the Carters had collected or written. The Carter Family song Wayworn Traveller was covered by a young Bob Dylan, who wrote his own words to the melody and named it Paths Of Victory. He then wrote new words to the melody and changed the time signature to 3/4, thus creating possibly his most famous song The Times They Are a-Changin'. Woody Guthrie did something similar by turning When This World's on Fire to This Land Is Your Land.