Carlene Carter

From the start, Carlene Carter has blended country and rock while charting an independent course. She launched her professional journey as a rock performer in the mid-1970s, immersed herself in new wave sounds toward the decade’s end, and surfaced as a new country artist by the late 1980s. Across these phases her recordings consistently layered roots traditions—whether country or rock & roll—with a nervy, edgy vitality.

Carlene is the daughter of June Carter and Carl Smith, whose marriage ended when their daughter was two. June often brought the child along on Carter Family tours, sparking an early musical interest. At age 12 her mother wed Johnny Cash. After the wedding, Carlene and her stepsister Rosanne Cash served as backup singers in the Carter/Cash touring show.

At 15 she married Joe Simpkins and had a child; the couple divorced within a few years. In her late teens Carter entered college as a piano major yet never completed the degree. At 19 she married Jack Routh and had another child; that union also ended within two years.

In 1978 she chose to pursue music full-time, moving to Los Angeles and securing a Warner Bros. contract. Her debut album, Carlene Carter, emerged as a rock & roll project cut in London with Graham Parker’s backing band, the Rumour. The next year she issued her second album, Two Sides to Every Woman, which drew support from the Doobie Brothers. That same year she married singer/songwriter/producer Nick Lowe, then co-leader of the new wave rock & roll revival band Rockpile. Lowe guided her musical direction in the early 1980s, and her third album—the new wave-inflected country-rock set Musical Shapes (1980)—reflected the influence of Lowe, Rockpile, and Dave Edmunds. Though the album earned critical praise, it failed commercially. She followed Musical Shapes in 1981 with Blue Nun, which continued the new wave-country approach; like its predecessor, the record was overlooked by buyers.

Throughout the early 1980s Carter remained distant from the country scene while living in England with Lowe. After Blue Nun she halted recording and instead gave solo performances; she also took a starring role in the theatrical production Pump Boys and Dinettes. Carter and Lowe’s marriage dissolved in the mid-1980s, prompting her return to the States and her integration into the touring Carter Family.

In 1989 she began shaping a comeback album with Howie Epstein, bassist for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. That year she also performed a duet with Southern Pacific on the Top 40 hit “Time’s Up.” Reprise signed Carter in 1990 and released her long-delayed fifth album, I Fell in Love, later that year. I Fell in Love retained rock influences yet offered a more direct country sound than earlier work, and country radio responded. The album became a hit, with two singles—“I Fell in Love” and “Come on Back”—reaching number three. Little Love Letters, her 1993 follow-up issued on Giant Records, matched that success; its opening single, “Every Little Thing,” also peaked at number three. Little Acts of Treason, her 1995 album, did not match the commercial heights of its two predecessors yet still registered moderate country-chart success, and a hits collection, Hindsight 20/20, appeared in fall 1996. A series of personal and professional setbacks followed, intensified by the 2003 death of Howie Epstein, with whom she had become romantically involved, and by the subsequent losses of her mother, her sister, and her stepfather within a few months. Carter resumed performing when she joined the cast of the stage musical Wildwood Flowers: The June Carter Story, playing her mother and delivering several Carter Family classics. A concert album, Live in London at the Marquee Club, appeared in 2005, and she returned to the studio with producer (and former Doobie Brother) John McFee to cut the reaffirming comeback album Stronger in 2008. In 2013 Carter appeared at the annual Farm Aid concert and launched a new studio project with producer Don Was, recording a collection of classic Carter Family songs in her own style. The resulting album, Carter Girl, arrived in spring 2014.