Subject: RE: Obit: Janette Carter
From:
Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 23 Jan 06 - 08:45 AM
Ahhhhhhhhh this really hurts.
Many years ago, I was a part of the Adirondack Folk Gospel Festival near Albany, NY. The first year I performed there, Janette Carter was also a performer. We ended up, along with Kathy Lee Johnson hanging around together all weekend as a protest against a policy of the festival organizer. The first day that we were there, several volunteers came up to us to complain that they were not allowed to eat at the meals prepared for the performers. We were very upset about it and spoke to the festival owner, but he hadn't provided enough food for the volunteers and didn't feel he could change the ruling. We were upset enough about it that we decided that if the volunteers couldn't eat with the performers, we wouldn't either. So, for the weekend, Janetee, Kathy Lee and I drove into town and ate together. We also kicked around, going to garage sales and stopping in funky junk shops. The first night that we were there, Janette got up to use the common bathroom outside of her room (we were sleeping in dormatories of a private school) and locked herself out. She ended up going outside and climbed back through the window into her room. The only mistake that she made was that it wasn't her room. It was Kathy Lee's... Kathy Lee is blind, so when she heard someone crawling in through her window, she had no idea who it was and when she called out, Janette identified herself. They both had a big laugh over it and spent half the night just talking in Kathy Lee's room... and then Janette stayed there for the rest of the night.
Janette was one of the most unpretentious people I've ever had the pleasure to meet. She had no inflated attitude about her musical skills. She just played autoharp at the festival... I don't know if she played guitar. But she had that Carter family sound in her voice and on Sunday morning when we gathered at dawn for service, she led us all in singing Will The Circle Be Unbroken. We were standing in a circle holding hands with the sun just coming up, gathered on a big lawn on the side of the Adirondack mountains looking down over the mountain and across to the next mountain peak. It was an experience I will never forget.
For a few years after the festival, we kept in touch and she gave me a copy of a book she'd written about the Carter Family (which I doubt is in print now.) But somewhere along the line she moved, and I lost contact with her. I tried to find her over the years but never could get an address.
Now she's gone... what a sweet, modest, unassuming loving person.
Rest well, Jeanette
Jerry
|
sj
