A.P. Carter was a fine song collector. According to the notes by Ed Kahn (April 2000) for the Columbia/Legacy cd Can the Circle Be Unbroken (CK 65707), "[A.P's] main contribution ... was in finding material for the group to sing. A.P. spent much of his time scouring the country around their home in Virginia finding people who knew songs that The Carter Family could fashion into their style. Many of the songs in The Carter Family repertoire list A.P. as composer. In fact, few of the songs carrying his name were actually written by him. While he did compose a few songs, including "My Clinch Mountain Home"... for the most part he collected old songs which were in the public domain and simply claimed composer credit so the royalty payments could come to the group. In this way, both the music publishers and the artists could earn extra money from the record companies.

"This was the common practice at that time as the music publishers could not make money from public domain songs unless there was someone who would claim credit for the song. In the early days of the recording industry, it was common for musicians to record public domain songs and put their name on them. Eventually, as the pool of traditional songs was used up, the music publishers pushed for more original compositions."

He goes on to describe how fans also sent songs they thought the group might like, mostly old favorites rather than original compositions.

~ Becky in Tucson